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THE TWO 



Lost Centuries of Britain. 



BY 



WWL. H. BABCOCK. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 
1890. 



THE LIBRARY 

OF CONGREgS 

Washington! 



Copyriglit, 1890, by Wm. H. Babcock. 




PREFACE. 



This little book is the outgrowth of an earnest en- 
deavor to see clearly in my own mind, and for my own 
purposes, a part of the life of sixth century Britain. 
Almost at the beginning, I found that this implied 
much more, every decade hanging to the next like the 
links of a chain. Authority suggested authority ; one 
problem tempted the inquirer to another. My mass of 
notes grew bulky, even portentous. The natural out- 
let was by a careful consecutive statement, necessarily 
for the most part in narrative form and covering all 
that was really germane to the purpose in hand. 

This proved an arduous undertaking, though not 
without a charm. Working in such materials, one 
could not but find it so. And now that it is ended, I 
am encouraged to think that it may serve the turn of 
others besides myself; and even entertain those who 
have no special object in view besides enjoyment. At 
the worst, one may look for sympathetic readers among 
the multitude who have delved in the same mine ; alas ! 
with the too frequent result of mutual contradiction. 
I, too, have contradicted a little, as in duty bound ; but 
I beg not to be regarded as doing so out of incurable 

3 



4 PREFACE. 

perversity. One would wish to stand well with his 
most reliable audience. 

There are those who will not concede that I am 
writing history, because I admit and present the prob- 
able, which is not provable in any strict sense. This 
raises the question of what history means. If it be a 
setting forth of the past as the past verily was, then the 
aid of inference and analogy cannot be excluded. A 
string of barren facts, with nothing to correlate, illus- 
trate, or explain them, would be nearly as misleading 
as the wildest fiction. By the aid of a reasonable and 
regulated imagination, we may go right ; without it, we 
are certain to go wrong. A grinning skeleton is a very 
demonstrable residuum ; -but what idea does it convey of 
the fair young girl whose beauty was built up thereon ? 
The foundation of every work like this must neces- 
sarily be the same. I have accepted Gildas on the 
authority of Dr. Guest and Mr. Green, making con- 
scientiously the most of him. There really is more 
than would be supposed, when his hints are examined 
thoughtfully and in detail. JSFennius, explained by 
Mr. Skene, is of even more capital importance. With- 
out access to the manuscripts, I have necessarily been 
guided in the main by the printed editions of Dr. Gunn, 
and others, as I find them. For the Chronicles, I 
have generally preferred Ethel ward, although it mat- 
ters little. The early Welsh poetry of Llywarch, 



PREFACE. 5 

Aneurin, Taliessin, Merddin, and lesser bards I have 
used freely and found particularly fruitful. A great 
mass of publications like the Journal of the Archse- 
ological Society, the Archceological Journal, the Ar- 
chseologia Cambrensis, the Cambro- Britain, and the 
" Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute" have 
been studied volume by volume and reduced to more 
manageable shape. In " Geoffrey of Monmouth" and 
in " Henry of Huntington," fancy and real tradition are 
interwoven, the difference being chiefly of degree. Yet 
we cannot afford to discard them ; nor have I done so. 

Among modern writings, I have profited most by 
Mr. Skene's " The Four Ancient Books of Wales" and 
" Celtic Scotland ;" Professor Pearson's " History of the 
Early and Middle Ages of England ;" Professor Rhys's 
" Celtic Britain ;" Dr. Guest's " Origines Celtica" and 
scattered papers ; Mr. Whittaker's " History of Man- 
chester ;" Mr. Stephens's " Literature of the Cymry ;" 
Dr. Freeman's various histories and addresses; Mr. 
Wright's " The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon ;" Mr. 
Coode's " The Romans in Britain ;" and Mr. Green's 
" The Making of England." 

One may add to these a long list of works consulted 
or studied separately or comparatively, partly or wholly, 
once only or repeatedly, as their relative importance to 
the end in view would seem to dictate : " The Mabino- 
gion" of Lady Guest; Professor Boyd Dawkins's 

1* 



Q PREFACE. 

" Caye-Hunting ;" Mr. Stuart- Glennie's "Arthurian 
"Localities" and "Merlin;" Nash's " Taliessin j" 
Williams's "Barddas" and "the lola MSS. ;" Loftie's 
" History of London ;" Poste's " Britannia Antiqua ;" 
Morant's "History of Essex;" Earle's "Two Old 
English Chronicles;" Allen's "History of London;" 
Mrs. Boger's " Myths, Scenes, and Worthies of Som- 
erset ;" " The Encyclopaedia Britannica ;" La Ville- 
marque's " Chants de la Bretagne ;" Sharon Turner's 
" History of the Saxons ;" Akerman's " Remains of 
Pagan Saxondom ;" Grant Allen's " Anglo-Saxon Brit- 
ain ;" " Roman Britain," of the same series ; Thorpe's 
" Codex Exoniensis ;" " Florence of Worcester ;" Dr. 
Guest's "History of English Metres;" Dr. Child's 
first six volumes of "English Ballads;" Taylor's 
"Ballads and Songs of Brittany;" certain notable 
papers of Symonds and W. Basil Jones; Malory's 
" History of King Arthur ;" Gibbon ; Mommsen ; 
Sammes's "Antiquities of Britain;" Branston and 
Le Roy's " History of Winchester ;" Akerman's " Nu- 
mismatic Manual," with others like it, and the cur- 
rent reviews and magazines, both archaeological and 
popular, which have contained many articles bearing 
on various branches of my subject. 

This is by no means an exhaustive enumeration, un- 
less in the sense of exhausting the reader on the thresh- 
old. For fear of such result I will say no more. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — The Preparation won Them 9 

II. — Prom the First Coming of the Saxon to the 

Passing of Eome 29 

♦/ill. — From Cunedba to Vortigern 46 

IV. — The Days of Kowena , 70 

V. — The Prince of the Sanctuary 95 

VI. — The Conquest of Sussex 115 

VII. — The Fall of Ambrose 121 

^ VIII. — Arthur— "Who anb Where ? 132 

IX. — The Wars of Arthur — in Theory 142 

Y^- X. — The Wars of Arthur — as they were .... 161 

-. XI.— The Empire of Arthur 178 

XII. — From the Fall of Arthur to the Conquest 

of the Severn 202 

XIII. — The Oterthrow of the West ........ 216 



THE TWO 

LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PEEPAEATIOJSr FOR THEM. 

Almost every people has had its beginning in pre- 
historic chaos ; but one only, in Europe at least, ever 
sank back for a season out of the daylight into the 
abyss. There is no parallel to the long submergence 
of Britain following the withdrawal of Eome : a dis- 
ordered darkness brooding over the rise of new island 
powers and the flickering away of old broken splendor ! 
For long another " world " in the western sea dimly 
reported ; then through four centuries a land of open 
travel and continued record, an integral member of 
the superb Roman organism ; and then again suddenly 
relegated to the myths and the shades, a haunt of spec- 
tral ferrymen and their dead passengers, a doubtful and 
ghostly hoverer on the frontier of knowledge ! Yet 
to this third era belonged Hengist and Vortigern ; the 
saint of the Hallelujah field, the beguiling Rowena ; 



10 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Vortimer, redoubtable in life and death; Ambrose, 
Prince of the Sanctuary ; Geraint, the hero of Enid and 
of Llongborth ; Arthur triumphing on Mount Baden ; 
Kyndylan of the Powys purple, defending in vain the 
shining city Uricon, — "the white town, the wasted 
town, the town of flame !" No wonder that the fancy 
of mankind, from Mark the Anchorite to Alfred Tenny- 
son, has lingered in that dreamland of enchantment ! 

Even the gravest researchers have yielded to the 
spell and gone knight-erranting as on no other field. 
To follow their wild excursions, to witness their shock 
and mutual overthrow, is at first only to multiply 
bewilderment. Hardly one fact is accorded standing- 
room by all ; hardly one assertion has escaped emphatic 
denial. We are not to know in peace who came to 
Britain ; or when or why they came ; whom they found 
there ; or what they did with these predecessors. We 
have the names of leaders, but every one is under in- 
dictment of being nobody at all, or somebody else. 
We have list after list of battles ; but each took place 
in several counties, or at various periods, or in the land 
of fable only. We have a body of surviving poetry, 
more than admirable in fragments and passages ; but 
does this belong partly to a hundred years before, or 
wholly to three hundred years later ? It is indeed ad- 
mitted on all hands that the Roman legions went away, 
for you positively cannot find any of them in England 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. H 

now, — but the time of their departure is shifted about 
from end to eud of a generation. We have even been 
warned that Britain had a continental namesake or 
double ganger to which — or to Bruttium — the divorcing 
letter of Honorius may have been directed. 

Yet let us be sane and easy, for the truth will come 
out of clamor. We have good warrant of experience 
to expect that it will take the lines of old authentic 
tradition enlarged and corrected. It is not for nothing 
that mankind has its memory. Gibbon, believing in 
Arthur for Nennius's sake, is near the final outcome. 
But we desire to know much more than Gibbon, or 
any one in his day, could tell. 

The witchery of words is in wait at the heart of the 
confusion, for names breed pictures, and pictures are 
not as adaptable as names, however the facts may vary. 
Mr. Coode's Lloegrian, for example, is a Teuton 
Romanized in feeling, habit and (partly) in blood ; Mr. 
Pearson's Lloegrian is a Celt imperfectly tutored by 
E.ome ; Dr. Guest's Lloegrian is an out-and-out Anglo- 
Saxon, hating Rome and Celt with equal fervor ; and 
the Lloegrian of other writers is a southern Celt with 
hardly a tatter of Rome about him, who would not 
join the muster and revel of Cattraeth. Now every 
one of these conceptions is true for some period or some 
area : the Lloegrian being simply, first or last, a 
dweller in the eastward part of Britain. 



12 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Again, the Saxon conquest is, in Mr. Coode's concep- 
tion, very little more than the comfortable absorption and 
education of barbarians by a resident mass of civilized 
people ; to Dr. Guest and Dr. Freeman it is a grim and 
thorough slaughter for more than a hundred years ; to 
Mr. Green it is a slow beating back, with few of the 
vanquished left within the victor's lines until the 
Severn Valley was gained ; to Archdeacon Jones it is 
the winning of the low grounds only, the Celt remain- 
ing in the uplands even to-day ; to Mr. Wright it is in 
the west, a comparatively harmless overrunning of a 
region already devastated by the Celts of Brittany; 
while Mr. Pearson makes it partly a matter of bargain 
or compromise, partly a championship of the cities 
against the unruly country people. In so long a con- 
test there must have been instances of almost every- 
thing. An adequate understanding of it would include 
the above and much more. 

In deciphering this past we must use all men's spec- 
ulations for what they are worth. We must bring to 
bear whatever science offers us of method and of glean- 
ings elsewhere. We must trace the antecedents of these 
people and the conditions surrounding them. We 
must compare the known doings of other men in other 
lands and times, where the cases are most nearly paral- 
lel. We must consult the writings of men then living, 
as far as they go ; the greater mass of oral tradition 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 13 

first put iuto writing at a later time or not yet written 
down at all ; the great book of the soil, opening very 
slowly, year by year, to show precisely what man was 
and man made use of then. It will be long indeed 
before any one will come equipped for such a life-work. 
Meanwhile, we may lay down outlines and proffer hints 
which ought to have some value. 

The time has gone by when one might hold, with 
Dr. Guest, that the first man in Britain was a Celt — 
some few thousand years ago. There were Esquimaux 
in the laud, no doubt, and savager, perhaps even half 
human, inhabitants before them. All such may have 
come and gone, following the ice northward or the sun 
southward and leaving an empty realm behind. The 
same thing has happened on a smaller scale in other 
island worlds. There are some which have been settled 
within sure human knowledge, the incomers finding no 
one to contest their sway. There are others which 
wait even yet for the abiding presence of man. 

But Britain, even after it was geologically cut loose 
from the mainland, lay too near for this to be likely. 
Tribe would mix with tribe across the channel ; shores- 
men, as soon as they could float, would from time to 
time be driven over, or tempted, from the hollow fen- 
land between the Rhine and the Elbe. There is also a 
shadowy and uncertain kind of a posteriori evidence. 
Anthropometric physiologists believe that they have 

2 



14 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

found Mongolian and other strange elements in the 
outlines and measures of some rural Englishmen. To 
be sure, these may be no more than inherited Roman 
importations from the far east and far south of that 
empire ; or even the contribution of Saxon sea-kings, 
who numbered, as Gibbon thought, a few adventurous 
Huns among their crews. Or the Ivernian conquerors, 
to borrow the good word of Professor E-hys, may have 
brought these qualities, latent by inheritance, in their 
veins. But, on the whole, it is perhaps not unlikely 
that some of these phenomena are the earlier human 
wave-marks imperfectly obliterated. 

From this author we may cite an inference concern- 
ing Jack the Giant-Killer and other early tales, and 
push it a little farther than he has cared to go. For 
the dwarfs and the gnomes had already been similarly 
explained, and the Irish peasant knows very well that 
" the good people" are those who dwelt in Ireland 
before the Irish came. Popular fancy is less creative 
than decorative ; and when it gives us heterogeneity as 
its report of the people of the past, we may accept 
heterogeneity as probably true. If they were all Iver- 
nians together, — the great man-eaters, the squat way- 
layers, the tricksy, light-footed little people of the fells, 
— they can hardly, at any rate, have been Ivernians of 
similar parentage on both sides. Where they differ we 
may find the dim record of yet earlier conquests by the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 15 

mighty of limb, or the shrewd and malignantly watch- 
ful, over the simple, the feeble, and the fleeing. Women 
have ever been preserved as a spoil in such inroads, 
and nature sees to it that every seemingly lost race 
shall live on in its conqueror's offspring. When one 
thinks of the tangle of human blood woven everywhere 
through many centuries, it is not to wonder that certain 
anthropologists (for example. Major Powell) deny that 
mankind are classifiable in races, or definitely in any 
way except by language and custom. Almost any ex- 
treme is better than to conceive of the Basque or Celt 
or Saxon as always fair-haired or always dark-haired, 
with equal limitation as to stature, temperament, and 
usage; and to carry the same unrelenting method 
through every other page of history. 

Still we may be warranted in supposing that most 
Iverniaus, when the Celts overtook them in Britain, 
were a darker and shorter race ; that their heads were 
more often long than round ; and their temperament 
(following an ingenious suggestion of Professor Rhys) 
imaginative and mirthful beyond that of their in- 
vaders. But in looking back through the mist, we 
hardly see them at all before they vanish from or in 
the new dominant race. Their legacy is a name here 
and there clinging to island or river, a few doubtful 
monuments, of which Stonehenge may be an example, 
a few relics from the caverns or from beneath the sod, 



16 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

and how much of English blood and English life in 
both hemispheres, we can never know. 

Their successors are nearer to us every way and 
less shadowy, but we stumble along even here. In 
the same breath we are told that the Celt was a tall, 
round-headed blonde, and that the test of Celtic blood 
in a nominally Teutonic people is the frequency of the 
long skull, the short stature, the dark hair and face. 
Yet each statement is true in its way, the former of 
the typical Celt, the Celt as he began ; the latter of 
the Celt as his own conquests had made him. 

For, whether his starting-point were the Central 
Asian plateau or the shores of the Baltic, he reached 
Britain from afar, fighting and marrying vi et armis 
through many intervening lands. Just before him 
fragments of the Ivernians and other early folk were 
driven ; close behind him the Teutons came crowding. 
Now and again they overtook and intermingled, or 
even thrust on ahead. So in an overlapping and con- 
fused entanglement of waves, each with its own 
especial compromise of aspect, language, and blood, 
one great rush of invasion came pouring across from 
the south, another (if traditions tell us truly) from the 
east and northeast over the German Ocean, the broad 
war-path of the Saxon and Viking in later days. 
And as Harold had to fight in the same year the 
Northman and the Norman, so the islander before all 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 17 

history may have had to make head at once against 
this swarming of taller, fairer folk upon the two 
most open borders of his realm. In that contest he 
could not win, nor was any escape open save to Ireland ; 
and even there they followed him mightily. There 
was nothing for it but to die or to mingle ; and as the 
Ivernian had darkened down to the folk whom he had 
found and conquered, the Celt, with like exceptions and 
modifications, began darkening down to him. These 
foremost Celts may have been Gaels, as some have 
thought ; or both Gaels and Cymry ; or people of an 
older tongue, which became differentiated into these 
languages on the island itself. The settlement must at 
any rate have begun in remote antiquity, for as early as 
the time of Strabo there was a fairly advanced popula- 
tion along the coast, with differences from the inland 
dwellers implying more than one later migration. 
Such, no doubt, recurred again and again, until the 
heavy hand of Rome was laid on the island, forbid- 
ding all change except what came with her will. 

But she let in the light also ; and by this and later 
knowledge we are able to map out the land after a 
fashion. Between the Thames and the Channel the 
most notable Caint or open upland of Britain was 
held by a fairly civilized race of husbandmen ; prob- 
ably Celts. Opposite the Armorican peninsula, the 
second-best crossing of the Channel, a Belgic invasion 
6 2* 



18 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

was filling Hampshire with Gauls, whom some have 
styled Germanic, 'but who were probably more so in 
sentiment and imitation than in blood. The Cateiu- 
chlani of Hertfordshire, and perhaps also the Iceni 
of Norfolk, Boadicea's redoubtable tribe, have had 
the same repute in some quarters, it may be on account 
of recent half-Teuton reinforcements from beyond 
the sea. The eastern folk were at any rate a people 
of good skill in peace and war, of some wealth, some 
traffic, and an abundant coinage. The Coritani north 
of them had won in Cymric legend the name of 
magicians ; even a little knowledge and a foreign 
aspect being a marvel in primitive eyes. A race of 
Scandinavian type, tall, brawny, red-haired " Cale- 
donian" lovers of freedom, held the lowlands of 
Scotland, testing severely the ablest general and the 
best courage of Rome. But the dark, sturdy Silures, 
no doubt largely Ivernian as Tacitus thought them, 
were even more indomitable beyond the lower Severn. 
Other folk of this latter favor, long afterwards known 
in terror as Pechts or Picts, predominated throughout 
the hill country of the far north. Yet others, in the 
main like them, roamed the north Welsh mountains, 
with reflex Irish settlements already fringing their 
coast ; or held the famous mining country of Damnonia, 
where some amelioration of manners (and of race) 
might be laid to the account of trading voyagers from 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 19 

the Orient. The midland folk were no doubt transi- 
tional, but except the childish imitations of the York- 
shire Brigantes, the farthest kingdom which undertook 
the work of minting coin, we have little to mark the 
fading out of the southeastward culture. 

There in the fertile open plateaux, easy of foreign 
access, easier for tillage and travel, power, as well as 
commerce and agriculture, had its home. As with 
greater communities, the centre shifted, now this petty 
realm, now that, becoming law-giver in its turn, until 
dominion rested, as if in prophecy, near the site of 
London. Before his long eclipse, the Celt shone out 
at his very best in the noble little empire of Cymbel- 
line, — Cunebelline the golden, the friend of Augustus, 
the darling of the gods. You may see him yet in fair 
relief on his own beautiful gold-pieces, borne to 
victory by the goddess who took the form of a brute 
for his sake. 

Yet, wide as was the interval between the huge 
Caledonian of the flaming hair and the dwarfish, dark- 
browed Silure, between the illustrious Cunebelline and 
the squat savage of the northern waste, they were all 
Celts in their language at any rate, so far as we know. 
There have been fancies to the contrary, such as that 
of Mr. Coode, who supposes the Anglo-Saxon to have 
found his language awaiting him in Britain ; but 
these remain fancies only. The greatest divergence 



20 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

of speech was probably between the Gael and the 
Cymro; each of these two main stems, according to 
Mr. Skene, being again divided into two groups of 
dialects, corresponding to the more familiar High 
German and Low German -clusters. The Gael was 
strongest in the far north and along tlie western 
coast ; but almost everywhere else yielded to his rival. 
The differences, already noted, of aspect and manners 
did not correspond with any accuracy to these differ- 
ences of tongue. All considered, our variegated 
friend, the Ancient Briton, was much more unlike 
himself and out of unanimity than popular fancy 
pictures him. 

Kome fixed those uneasy populations in their seats ; 
added to their volume and variety ; drew them partly 
from the heights into the valleys ; gathered the quieter 
elements into cities ; improved communication, opening 
many roads where few had been ; and fostered in all 
things, where she did not compel, conformity to her 
own higher or more luxurious standard. So zealously 
was the work done, that long after her departure there 
yet remained the glimmer of the imperial purple, the 
shadow of legionary discipline, the curse of Roman 
debauch. These were everywhere, unless in the 
woods and on the wilder heaths and hills. 

The Roman occupancy falls readily into three 
periods, — the first brutality of conquest; the long 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 21 

peaceful domination, when there was neither war or 
rumor of war, unless in a small way with predatory- 
mountain tribes on the far border; and the era of 
decay, when incursions became frequent and disastrous, 
usurpers abounded, wrangling, and year by year there 
grew a dread upon all of being cut off alive from the 
living mass of men. We remember the first period 
by the extravagance of cruelty which it employed and 
provoked, — the wrongs of Boadicea and her kindred, 
the massacre of London. These have stirred the 
blood of all succeeding generations, and will stir it so 
long as human sympathy endures ; but in the fact that 
there were seventy thousand immigrants to be over- 
whelmed by that blind retribution, besides many sur- 
vivors, we may more profitably study the great change 
already working on British soil. 

But this was the merest casual eddy of the in- 
coming flood. The legions built their forts and 
planted their garrisons, and settlements grew up about 
them, pushing continually farther to the west and north, 
until in each direction a line of half-military cities — 
Exeter, Caerleon, Wroxeter, Chester, or Carlisle and 
Durham — represented very nearly the final limit of 
civilization. 

In the open space behind them, colonies of veterans 
were planted ; merchants and mariners of many coun- 
tries gathered along the landing-places and narrow 



22 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

streets of the growing river towns ; and moneyed men 
from the Mediterranean, the Rhine, or tlie Loire took 
up their abode on the lands newly bought or granted, 
building low colonnaded dwellings of open interior 
and mighty expansion, the like of which have never 
been seen in England since their day. 

Yet the South European has not given up this 
architectural ideal even in the New World. Old 
Cuban or Mexican memories of its less imposing em- 
bodiments will be recalled by many a traveller. No 
•wonder that it should have been carried unimpaired 
so far as the Scotch lowlands or the valleys of the 
Exe and the Wye. 

Its hollow heart is sometimes a paved court-yard, 
sometimes a flower-garden. About this the rooms are 
built casemate-fashion, every one opening inwardly 
upon it and some also opening outwardly, with iron- 
barred windows which commonly have no glass in 
them. One story is the usual height at all points, 
except at the rear, where a second may be added. 
The front is often in stucco, painted gaudily. 

Under the magic of Rome, the inner walls broke 
into marble columns or threw out long pillared por- 
ticoes for the frescoed banquet-hall or the tessellated 
bathing-apartments, where one would move amid 
appliances now forgotten and over rare designs. 
Fountains, shrines, and statuary, all were multiplied. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 23 

In the later days Eastern decoration wound profusely- 
over capital and cornice. Walls and flooring bloomed 
out in the beauty of early myth and childlike fancy. 
Bathing or dreaming or dining, the Roman had ever 
around him the divinely familiar figures, — Aphrodite 
the foam-born ; Bacchus on his panther steed ; Orpheus 
with his dumb audience enthralled by melody ; Nar- 
cissus by the fountain ; the frolics of the nymphs and 
dryads ; the loves of Cupid and Psyche, of Jove and 
Leda, — perennial things which have become common- 
places without losing their delightfulness. 

In the transfer to Britain, some few changes became 
necessary. Of course the heating arrangements grew 
more numerous and ample, though following old 
models generally. The needs of new settlers com- 
pelled often a gradual or partial approach to what was 
desired. For material they commonly used what was 
near at hand, with varying results. Occasionally the 
founder of a house began with but a single row of 
rooms, to which later generations added wings and other 
outgrowths when successively needed. Often, especially 
in cities, there was tearing down and rebuilding again 
and again on or over the same foundations. The 
suburban villa answered fairly to what we know by 
that name ; but farther away the dwelling took on a 
more complex and self-sufficing character. It must be 
the centre of agricultural operations on a large scale ; 



24 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

a storehouse ample enough to defy famine, large 
enough to be garrisoned against any predatory wood- 
land enemy. It must even be something of a manu- 
factory, something of a provincial capital. These 
requirements varied in importance with the shifting 
of circumstances and of years. In the underground 
traces brought continually to light, we find their suc- 
cession hinted, and the expedients whereby such 
changes were met. Even the religious conversion 
under Constantine, though it cannot have been at 
all deep or thorough, has left some slight rural ves- 
tiges, if we understand them rightly, in the shrine 
of the nymph degraded to lucrative uses, her statue 
buried in debris where it lay overthrown. But what- 
ever the details of their history, the greatest of these 
Roman-British homes, when at their best, were un- 
doubtedly vast and imposing structures; little less 
than towns for area and population, or than palaces 
for the splendor of their appointments. 

The cities were in some instances, perhaps generally, 
provided with the central forum of their Italian pro- 
totype, the narrow streets in part converging thereon, 
the public baths, the wide and lofty basilica. In this 
last were the merchants' exchange, the committee- 
rooms, the administrative offices, the great court-room, 
or hall of audience, with its double array of Corin- 
thian pillars above and below the gallery. Verulam, 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 25 

whither the wealth of London may have largely 
resorted, was the possessor of a theatre and amphi- 
theatre worthy of the parent land. The temple of 
Hercules at Calleva, the temple of the sun at Aquse 
Solis, were edifices to make the burghers who dwelt 
about them dilate with pride. 

Yet at a bird's-eye view the British cities must have 
differed greatly, for a reason already given. Thus, in 
London architecture brick predominated, while the 
houses of some other towns were as often of wood 
only, and Uriconium shone out of the western wood- 
land in a garment of white stone and a head-dress 
glittering with mica. 

For defence they were equipped very unequally. 
London grew up around a fortress, and was walled 
again on a much more extensive plan when danger 
drew near in the decline of Roman power. Calleva 
(Silchester) and Uriconium (Wroxeter) were probably 
not enclosed until a still later time. The circumval- 
lation of Deva (Chester), Camulodunum (Colchester), 
and Anderida (Pevensey) may have been ample from 
first to last. • Verulam remained quite open until her 
final overthrow. 

But the Roman civilization of Britain was partial in 
area, thin and weak in personal influence, inferior | 
nearly everywhere to the best of Gaul, and attended / 
always by its shadow. Not only did all the mountain 



26 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

land remain wilfully or hatefully outside of it, but 
there is no reason to suppose that it made more than 
the barest lodgment in the rugged forests of the water- 
sheds, whether midland or well down towards the eastern 
and southern coasts. It followed the valleys upward, 
it spread fan-like over the open uplands, it busied itself 
about the marshes and estuaries near the sea, it fringed 
the great wall and the watchful skirts of the south- 
western garrisons, it left isles of uncertain light along 
the Roman and pre-Roman highways. But where the 
wild ox and the wild boar harbored, the refractory 
Briton who had no Latin nor aptitude for Latinization 
well might harbor too. Others of his kindred, less 
exacting or defiant, became the servile dependants of 
the conqueror, as they did again long afterwards when 
the Saxons came. Across the Wallbrook, within a 
stone's throw of the great fortress and the wealthy 
merchants' houses, lay the unhappy London of the 
Celt. Beside the splendor of Uriconium was ever a 
native Wrekin city tattered and wan. 

It has been said that the use of the Roman tongue 
became all but universal. It has also been said that 
this use answered only to that of English in India. 
But the former is not possible, or the results would 
differ ; and the latter is not possible, because of the 
relatively great number of the intruders and rulers. In 
the cleared country it is likely that Latin was almost 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 27 

universally understood, and commonly spoken after 
a fashion, although the more conservative elements 
might ignore it among themselves. In the rougher 
parts of the country — such as the ridges running 
northward and westward from near London, and the 
forests of Wyre and Ardeu and Sherwood, of Engle- 
wood and Selkirk — the knowledge would be confined 
to a very few besides the interpreters and the more 
friendly or imitative chiefs. There never was any 
Latin literature worth naming produced in Britain; 
and although in course of time a British poetry — very 
pathetic and very stirring — did come into being amid 
Roman wrecks and ruins, it was neither sung nor writ- 
ten in Latin, except a scrap or two here and there, and 
shows no more trace of Roman methods and qualities 
than if Virgil and Lucretius had never been. 

This being the state of affairs, we can see that there 
would always be a Roman party and a British party in 
the land; the former long dominant, and associated, 
both by the facts and their own continual advertisement, 
with every kind of obvious improvement, such as we 
now term progress ; the latter sullen and self-doubting 
in prosperous times, but gathering confidence with the 
falling away of Roman vigor, and exalting mere rude- 
ness in the scorn of effeminate indulgence. Long be- 
fore the end, it was said that there were cities in Britain 
where any one might be sure of a following who would 



28 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

make head on any pretext against the central power at 
Rome. Of the thirty provincial tyrants, in the old 
meaning of the word, who at one period disturbed the 
world-mistress, not less than seven or eight, including 
the two Tetricse, have been attributed to Britain. 
Carausius, in seceding from the body of the empire, 
made the revolt for the first time national. Guarded 
by its moving fleets and the blue ring of sea, the island 
is said to have enjoyed a prophetic peace and felicity, 
all its own, during his seven years' sway. 



CHAPTER II. 

FEOM THE FIEST COMING OF THE SAXON TO THE 
PASSING OF EOME. 

In another aspect, the episode of Carausius is epochal 
and significant. His opportunity came of a command 
and a power to punish piracy and piratical inroads. 
There had always, within historical limits, been navies 
of a sort in the narrow seas. The Veneti, afloat, were 
able to meet Caesar mightily and task him well. But 
now a new and more formidable race of fighting-men 
were taking en masse to the water. Partly Teutonic, 
partly what we call Scandinavian, mingling in every 
degree, they put out from the whole curve of Frisian 
coast and from beyond its limits on either side. It was 
indeed the most natural thing for them to do. As they 
had driven the Celt quite over the border of the conti- 
nent, so now a like impulsion — from the unknown East 
— was on them and their kindred. A people of strange 
aspect, hardly indeed of this world as rumor reported, 
was threatening to make the German of the mainland 
a being of the past. All the nations were in move- 
ment. Some, leaguing with the emperor, made a barely 
sufficient battle. Others adopted the easier expedient 
of falling on the ill-defended provinces themselves. 

3* 29 



30 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

A chance exploit showed them how vulnerable was 
the empire on every seaward frontier. Escaping from 
the Euxine in the very ships that had transported them, 
a body of marauding Franks lived at free quarters 
wherever it pleased them to land between Sicily and 
the Channel coast, finally returning home freighted 
with tales of adventure and abundant booty. All their 
tribal brotherhood were dazzled and stirred. The con- 
tagion spread northward, with no lessening. The Saxon, 
better prepared for the new rdle, seized on it even 
more eagerly and continued in it longer. Already he 
was by nature, and perhaps by name (it is Dr. Guest's 
conjecture), the Engle who loved the sea. All the 
northern waters were alive with those vikings. Wel- 
coming whoever would come, — Norwegian, Frisian, 
Dane, Westphalian, or Easterling, — they spread sail and 
sj)ed oar for the harrying of the British coast. Their 
war was the war of the red savage when least human- 
kindly : — the villages in flames, the tenth prisoner 
tortured to a frightful death, women borne helplessly 
away ! They were not without a certain taste and 
skill in ornament ; a manly ring in their song that 
stirs the blood to-day ; a hopeful outlook on life which 
was rightly prophetic of greater things ; but as yet 
they could only hate the culture in which they did not 
share, and long ravenously for the fruits which were 
not of their growing. Nevertheless they had wit and 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 31 

wariness enough to make terms where good terms 
could be made, and would take anything very readily 
as a gift when that was cheaper than winning it spear 
in hand. The Admiral Carausius was not averse to a 
bargain, and paid for it by a royal outlawry. 

Once at open enmity with Rome, he was almost neces- 
sarily the friend and ally of the Saxon. This, with the 
force at command, would insure his own frontier against 
depredation ; but it would almost as certainly involve 
more or less of friendly settlement. The British har- 
bors were too convenient to be neglected by adven- 
turers out of food and water, or merely seeking a tem- 
porary rest among those who half feared and courted 
them. The spoils of other coasts were very tempting 
to the islander when brought in, lightly won, by 
men willing to part with them at a kindly figure. Once 
secure for the time against being appropriated whether 
or no, the half-Romanized beauties of the shore may 
have looked with more than approval on the hardy 
strangers, who had no thought of reclining while they 
dined, and whose leaders, at any rate, were commonly 
great of limb, ruddy and fair in the face, golden of 
beard and hair. Some of these latter would take ser- 
vice gladly in a fleet which was at once imperial in 
name and at war with the real emperor. Others, col- 
lectively or singly, by accident or design, would cease 
their roving and cast a firmer anchor. 



32 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

As we have seen already, it is not possible to indicate 
a time within the limits of history so early that this 
kind of infiltration from the eastward was not already 
going on. Nor can we be quite sure of fixing an end. 
" At the close of the last century/' says the author of 
Mehalah, the coast of Essex about Mersey isle was 
"haunted by smugglers and other lawless characters. 
... A strain of wild, reckless, law-defying gypsy blood 
entered the veins of the marshland populations. Ad- 
venturers from the Low Countries, from France, even 
from Italy and Spain, originally smugglers, settled on 
the coast . . . married and left issue. In the plaster 
and oak cottages away from the sea . . . live the old 
East Saxon slow-moving, never-thinking day-laborers. 
In the tarred wreck-timber cabins by the sea, just above 
the reach of the tide, swarms a yeasty turbulent race of 
mixed-breeds." Even so late as 1889 an explorer of 
the Essex Archipelago has pointed out the prevalence 
of Dutch names and odd costumes among the Anglicized 
rather than English people of these Roman-walled 
islets. But for the distinctively Saxon settlement in 
its first appreciable beginning, we may look to the time 
of Carausius. 

Yet it cannot have been more than a tattered 
fringing of the more tempting or exposed frontier; 
melting indistinguishably, for the most part before long, 
into the mass of shore-line population. For the insular 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 33 

rule, even with the extension of Allectus, endured only- 
ten years ; and then Rome was paramount again, ex- 
clusive as before. But perhaps the example of Carausius 
had some effect even on Constantine, the son of the con- 
quering general, who really won the Roman purple 
instead of a barren ambition and an insular sover- 
eignity. There is no reason to doubt that he held the 
borders firmly, and the chief changes which he wrought 
for the island must have been in religious and national 
feeling and in southward emigration. If not a Briton 
by birth, as was afterwards feigned, Constantine the 
Great was identified with Britain by life-long residence. 
Britons felt like world-wide conquerors when he be- 
came emperor at Rome. So deeply was the popular 
imagination stirred that, as we shall see, his name alone, 
recurring at a critical period, was enough to win for an 
obscure soldier the empire of Britain, Gaul, and Spain, 
and, perhaps, to found a dynasty which lingered on 
into the second century of the Saxon conquest. 

If many volunteers went southward in his train, or 
families of the Romanizing party followed him to the 
world-capital, this was not the first depletion of the 
island due to Rome. From an early period of con- 
quest armies had been recruited there to fight in re- 
mote countries. In part, these conscriptions may have 
lessened the Roman and other recent elements. But 
the reduction of British blood, in the pre-Roman sense. 



34 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

was no doubt the general result. For every reason, 
soldiers would be taken by preference from among the 
more redoubtable and intractable tribes. When these 
were no longer to be come by in sufficient numbers, 
the quiet peasantry and townspeople must furnish their 
quota. And when Celtic men were withdrawn and 
Celtic women remained, the latter would often make 
Hobson's choice of foreigners. 

It was a rather comically wide choice in certain cases. 
Spaniards, Dalmatians, Burgundians, Indians, Scyth- 
ians, Syrians, Gauls, and Moors! Hardly any people 
of the accessible world, however unrelated or uncouth, 
but was required to aid in defending Britain — and pro- 
viding her future sons. The infusion of foreign mili- 
tary blood must at times have been very great; as 
when Agricola and his legions overcame the indepen- 
dence of ISTorth Britain, or Severus trampled it down a 
second time with armies out of which he lost fifty 
thousand men ; or when Hadrian so immensely strength- 
ened the northern defences. There can seldom have 
been less than twenty thousand legionaries and auxil- 
iaries on the island at once between the year 50 and 
the year 400. To calculate their possible progeny 
in successive generations would be like reckoning the 
sands of the sea-shore. 

But of course the effect was not equal, nor nearly 
equal, everywhere. The mountain tribes and the ruder 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 35 

woodland people felt it briefly or not at all. In the 
midland cities and cultivated valleys it was slight and 
occasional, as troops for some special purpose were moved 
hither and thither. In the towns known significantly 
as " of the legions ;" in London, which took the legion- 
ary name Augusta; in York, long the military and 
civil head-quarters, it was necessarily great, though 
not necessarily predominant. But it was greater than 
anywhere else along the line of the wall which corre- 
sponded nearly to the modern frontier of England and 
Scotland, along that of the lesser and later one crossing 
the island from the Firth of Forth to that of Clyde, 
and in parts of the intervening country, the Scotch 
lowlands. In parts, but not in all, for remnants of the 
old Caledonians and Msetse, variously modified, lingered 
in some places, — perhaps fastnesses like the Lammer- 
moors and the Pentland hills, — and under the name of 
Attacotti were ready on occasion to become the most 
ferocious of all the northern foes. But their more than 
usual formidableness may imply that they had some 
benefit of legionary example and foreign blood. The 
Spaniard of the New World found his one unconquer- 
able enemy in the Araucanian whose tactics were like 
his own, and that enemy became vindictive beyond ex- 
ample whenever he was partly a Spaniard too. Insur- 
rections of such as these, and incursions in force from 
the northward now and then, left the lesser wall and 



36 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. ' 

its dependencies an outlying breakwater insulated in 
a hostile sea. There were no such experiences for the 
main wall until the time of Theodosius, although 
threateners might lurk in the rough country of the 
Brigantes all the way southward to the Peak of Derby- 
shire and the later kingdom of ^Imet. Here at the 
north were strongholds by the dozen, the fortified mili- 
tary cities, and about four-fifths of the entire army. 
The newly-arriving legionaries or auxiliaries found 
themselves in a garrison population, the descendants 
of the descendants of soldiers inwoven in every degree, 
sharing the time-consecrated tradition of obedience, 
fidelity, vigilance, and daring; the imperial eagle 
which had flown afar but was always the same; 
the tongue of civilization whereby the Ehone, the 
Danube, and the Jordan might converse and be as 
one. The complex daughters of the land bore them a 
more complicated martial offspring. When they de- 
parted they left the better part of themselves behind. 
Even after the entire withdrawal of the Romans and 
all who followed them, there remained a strenuous 
power of resistance. Of the four great terminal for- 
tresses, one may have fallen early, but a second held 
out for a hundred and fifty years, to fall in the great 
slaughter of Catraeth ; a third maintained its indepen- 
dence, except for one brief interval, during four centu- 
ries, and the last became the capital of a free Roman- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 37 

British kingdom of equal duration. Undoubtedly 
there was here a great reinforcement by Celtic valor. 
But we know that in civil war the Roman party of the 
north proved strong enough to overthrow its opponents ; 
and the tenacity of Strathclyde must be ascribed in 
part to the far-descended sons of the legions. 

There was another and very different border where 
similar causes produced similar effects, although less 
in degree, because their duration was less. The Pict 
had always made war at the north, but we have seen 
when the Saxon began. In the second century there 
was no need to garrison, unless very slightly, the 
eastern and southern coast ; but from the time of 
Carausius, or a little before, such need had become 
evident, and kept increasing. About the middle of 
the fourth century the Saxons, Picts, and Scots for 
the first time (it seems) began acting in combination, 
the island being simultaneously assailed from almost 
every quarter. When Theodosius landed, coming to 
the rescue, the open country of Kent was in the 
hands of barbarians, who were driving their prisoners 
to be sold like cattle. These must surely have 
been Saxons, for the points of assault of the other 
hostile peoples were far away. He defeated them 
between Richborough and London ; and afterwards 
relieved the anxious midland towns, hurrying the 
Picts northward and the Scots into their native island 

4 



38 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

again. So runs the historical tale, but this cannot 
be taken without exception. There were Scots in 
great number after his time on the western coast of 
Britain, and the Saxons, also said to have been ex- 
pelled, must have left some residuum along the shore, 
to which by partial occupancy and continual annoyance 
they gave their name. 

The danger had been too imminent for easy recur- 
rence. Theodosius made the shell of the island harder 
everywhere, that the enemy might not again break iu. 
The territory between the walls was definitely reoccu- 
5/ pied, the Attacotti were conscripted by wholesale to 
serve abroad, and the Count of the Saxon shore found 
himself in possession of a chain of fortresses, well 
manned, which might save him from the fate of his 
predecessor, Nectarides, whom the freebooters had 
slain. During the next forty years they proved 
sufficient, and we may suppose, with Dr. Guest, the 
development there of just such a soldierly people as I 
have described along the northern wall. 

Only we cannot think of it as a continued belt follow- 
ing the coast. The forts were not connected in any 
way, and the settlement surrounding each depended on 
it alone. We have seen that an enemy was quite able 
to overrun the country between London and its forti- 
fied Channel port. No doubt they had entered where 
Rochester and Richborough left an intervening gap, 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 39 

or through some similar gate of access. The Saxon 
shore was well calculated for a loDg struggle in detail 
against fate, but, like a string of gems (hard enough 
one by one), it did not hold firmly together. 

And before very long Inhere was a great depletion. 
The legions of the island followed Maximus back 
towards Rome, as they had followed the first Con- 
stantine. But now the throng of native volunteers 
became alarming. Not only was the prestige of that 
earlier success with him, but to the half-Romanized 
Brito»s he was a more than half-Britonized Roman. 
Led by a dream, as the bards and story-tellers were 
fond of averring, he had come from afar to win a 
British princess for his bride. Even the all but inde- 
pendent mountain kings laid claim to him as kinsman 
by marriage. Later the story ran that their ample 
reinforcements won for him the victory; however 
this may be, it is certain that his great withdrawal 
of British forces bore the blame in after-years for 
many calamities. It must have been a movement 
en masse of the fighting males, and the most martial 
districts would suffer most. Some of course remained, 
and many more, no doubt, came back to their homes, 
but the legends may be right in peopling foreign lands 
at the expense of the isle, and singling out Armorica 
as the one which profited most largely. The matri- 
monial army of young women sent after them may 



40 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

or may not have any claims on our belief. The same 
expedient on a lesser scale was certainly resorted to in 
Elizabeth's day. But this fiction, if such it were, at 
least recognized that element in the episode of conquest 
which made it an evil and a menace for the future. 
The same may be said of that savager tale which deals 
with their treatment of Breton wives. They were 
a host of marrying men, and their departure was 
the withdrawal not only of one great army in the 
present, but also of iimumerable armies like them, 
potentially existent, yet never really to be. 

Time passed, and the empire was in feeble hands 
again ; and the barbarians were swarming in as before. 
Stilicho, the last Roman general worthy of the name, 
repeated the exploit of Theodosius, though with a 
smaller force, the peril being less urgent. The land 
was cleared once more of naked painted people and 
allied seafaring marauders. But it was rather a gasp 
for fresh air than a real breathing spell. The cloud 
settled again upon Britain. Franks and Vandals 
and Sueves were threatening to sweep away the line 
of retreat and leave both legionaries and Roman 
citizens together far from the central life of their race. 
I An exodus to the continent set in. For a generation 
or two the wealthier provincials had been gathering 
in the towns, where the walls gave protection, and the 
theatre, the baths, and the forum aided the illusion 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 41 

that after all nothing was quite so real and abiding 
as the luxury of Rome. JSTow, the same impulse 
carried them another stage. As the Saxon shoreman, 
the northern borderer, and the Welsh fighting-man had 
gone southward after glory, so almost in their wake 
went the voluptuary of the towns for a little longer 
lease of Fool's Paradise. And whatever he could 
carry went with him ; what he could not carry, he put 
as far as might be under ground. 

The soldiery, not what they had been, took the 
alarm, rose in mutiny, set up and pulled down first 
one puppet, then another, as uncertain whence sal- 
vation could come. At last they found hope in a 
name, and the second Constantine had the wit to 
begin by proving himself really a leader. At their 
head he swept back the Picts over the northern 
wall, then transported his forces to the continent after 
greater things. Many of the youth went with him 
besides those regularly enrolled, and again the belts 
and islands of semi-military population must have 
been the heaviest losers. Fortune favored him still 
further in the repulse of the assailants from beyond 
the Rhine, and yet more in the acquisition of Gaul 
and Spain. His son Constans, taken from a cloister, 
was made Csesar. He had fair hopes of uniting 
the western empire under him. But neither he 
nor any other Roman ever sought to win again the 

4* 



42 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

island he had deserted. Its final separation in a 
military sense dates from this withdrawal of the im- 
perial array about a.d. 408. A legion may possibly 
have returned long after, to aid in holding the fron- 
tiers. But probably this was not so ; and in any 
event the time had gone by when such a reinforcement 
could turn the current of history. Still there was no 
immediate declaration of independence. A calm of sur- 
prise and pleasure must have settled for the moment 
upon Britain. The Picts, humbled by their recent 
experience, were taking counsel together before de- 
scending again from their upland homes. The 
Saxons can hardly yet have heard of their oppor- 
tunity. The more southern foes, who were to have 
seized the lines of communication, had been driven 
far away. The late panic may have begun to seem a 
little ridiculous. 

Yet the provincials were not sleeping unguarded. 
The most careless commander — and Constantine had 
not shown himself to be such — would hardly withdraw 
all the regular forces, and make no provision what- 
ever against what must follow. The most feeble and 
fatuous population would contrive to put some watch- 
men in its fortresses. A militia of this sort would 
almost necessarily be formed on the Roman model. 

. There is indeed positive evidence of such organiza- 
tion. Gildas represents the Roman soldiery on the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 43 

eve of departure as furnishing patterns of their arms, 
aiding the islanders in the work of fortification, and 
exhorting them to " valiantly protect their country." 
The ancient poems in the book of Taliessin and the 
Black Book of Caermarthen repeatedly mention the 
"nine hundred horse" which went regularly as aux- 
iliaries with a Roman legion. These figure as attend- 
ant on Cunedda ; also as obeying the " commanders" 
Bed win and Bridlaw. Again the sixty centuria are 
mentioned as holding the waJl. Finally, we are told 
in plain terms of " the legion for the benefit of the 
country," and of "the loricated legion" from which 
"arose the Guledig" Arthur. Also at the south we 
hear of Ambrosius opposing Roman discipline to the 
onslaught of Cerdic; and the Britons of Banbury, 
under Aurelius Conan, are believed to have adopted 
Roman formation and strategy without avail. The 
standards also were Roman : witness the eagle un- 
earthed at Silchester and "the dragon of the great 
Pendragonship." In all this, revival is so much less 
likely than survival that we have good warrant for 
assuming the latter. 

No doubt the Roman defensive organization would 
be continued also in its larger features. A Count of 
the Saxon Shore there still must be, though perhaps 
under another name, giving some unity, some chance 
of concerted action to the garrisons along that coast. 



44 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Also a Count of Britain in the west, where were tur- 
bulent mountaineers and Irish inroads. Above all, in 
the north a Duke of Britain with a preponderance of 
command that almost involved supremacy. For here 
the great danger lay. Afterwards, with other titles, 
men called him the Gosgordd of the wall. 

The calm did not last. Within two years the return 
of alarm brought the recurrence of revolution. Con- 
stantine's power had begun to fall apart already. Ger- 
ontius, his best general, revolted against the revolter, 
and hounded the barbarians on to their prey, not 
sparing Britain, his native soil. It was rumored through 
the province that all the pirates were coming back 
again, and the naked, painted savages from the half- 
frozen land. Urgent appeals were sent to Honorius ; 
but the worthless idler, of Ravenna, who would hardly 
bestir himself on behalf of the Eternal City, had no 
good words for subjects far away. He answered, if at 
all, that they might shift for themselves ; and they did 
— shifting his functionaries also. Nennius would seem 
to imply that violence was offered to these, but his 
meaning is not clear. They were driven away at the 
least, and the more odious offices ended then and there. 
Others undoubtedly survived, with a change of incum- 
bents, for, as Mr. Pearson and Mr. Coode have pointed 
out, they are in the municipal constitution of English 
towns to this day. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 45 

We may go a step or two farther, not wholly con- 
jectural. The military commanders, having already 
been changed by the withdrawal of Constantine, would 
be quite out of the upheaval. Procopius, quoted by 
Mr. Skene, declares that the kingly power did not 
lapse, but that the island remained subject to tyrants. 
By space and much besides this writer was nearly as 
far removed from that chapter of contemporary history 
as we are to-day. But so salient a fact would make 
its impression, and we may give ear to it as at least 
likely. 



CHAPTER III. 

FEOM CUNEDDA TO VORTIGEEN. 

PEorESSOR Rhys offers a novel theory of dual 
control, with the north in the hands of Cunedda 
Wledig, the south in those of Ambrosius Aurelianus, 
Count of the Saxon Shore. Each of these men bore 
an imperial title and held a great command ; but 
unhappily they were not contemporaries, the great 
Ambrose being slain about one hundred years later. 
Moreover, the disparity of power would have been fatal 
to the independenee of the southeast. Besides, York 
had been for long the capital of Britain. Generals 
had twice gone forth from it, conquering even Rome. 
The purple belonged there in a special sense. A great 
measure of provincial license might be looked for, but 
probably there was at least the nominal recognition of 
unity in the nation and in the governing power. 

Was Cunedda the first ruler of free Britain ? There 
is no other figure which stands out so prominently from 
that canvas; but this is all any one can say. Mr. 
Stephens has thought his existence at the time open to 
question, basing the doubt on a poem of Taliessin, who 
therein professes to have known him in the sixth cen- 
46 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 47 

tury. But the balance of evidence inclines the other 
way. 

Whatever his personality, he could be nothing less 
than emperor if he were to claim general obedience. 
Not that the title subsisted literally. It was translated 
into the Cymric language, and so lived on. Thus 
Maximus the emperor became the Maxen Wledig of 
Welsh story. Ambrose was Embres Guledig. Arthur 
and Cunedda each bore Guledig with his name. The 
Galedig or AVledig was emphatically what the imper- 
ator began by being, a general-in-chief, a king of war 
over warlike kings. He wore the imperial purple. It 
was the continuation of the same office. 

But this was not the only form in which the title 
survived. The Romanizing party were not wholly 
content with Cymric sounds in such a case. Their 
spokesman, Gildas, converts both emperor and Guledig 
into Aurelius or Aurelianus. Thus we have Ambrosius 
Aurelianus, Aurelius Ambrosius, and Aurelius Conan, 
the latter being to the Welshman Cynan Guledig. 
There can be no doubt of the equivalency. 

In all likelihood this first British sovereign was of 
the northern soldier-land between Stirling and Carlisle. 
Being in command from before the Roman withdrawal, 
he must have been at least partly Roman in feeling, if 
not in blood. He was threatened from several quarters 
at once by a bewildering variety of enemies, and under 



48 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

the jealous watch of an opposition that grew stronger 
continually. It was the place for a great genius ; but, 
failing genius^ he must go, as he went, to the wall. 

The Pict was his greatest foe ; and next the aqyafeie 
Irishman then called the Scot ; and then the sea-faring 
Dane-Dutchman- called Saxon. To these have been 
conjecturally added the Welsh mountain-tribes and 
the Armorican immigrants. Behind these last was 
another danger, which no modern historian has 
noticed, though Nennius states it plainly. But it 
could not be felt as yet. Let us consider these ele- 
ments of the problem in the order given. 

Who were the Picts? The Brithwr, the Britons; 
primarily, the painted people ; secondarily, the mixed 
people; in every way the most authentic and only 
unconquered representatives of the island as it was 
before the Romans came. But so utterly had this 
been lost sight of, that to Gildas they were a " foreign 
nation" of *' villanous faces" and very little decency. 
Now, Gildas is the champion abuser of all men except 
the men of Christian Rome ; but in this instance he 
has some reason. We ought to sympathize, maybe, 
with the free and daring Brithwr; but sympathy is 
not easy with wild irrational people who prefer to 
go naked and to look like cannibals. Yet in that 
northern climate this can hardly have been their 
invariable array. They formed alliances with the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 49 

Saxons, — hardly introducing nudity into diplomacy. 
They kept spies regularly in the enemy's camp, who 
assuredly wore clothing. They received and enrolled 
deserters, even Romans, of course without requiring 
them to undress and freeze. In quieter moments they 
learned something of convention, something of civility, 
from their hated but more enlightened neighbor. 
They spoke an old language comparing with Scotch 
Gaelic as the Welsh compares with the Cornish ; " a 
cultured or literary language" in the time of Bede, 
which is supposed to have been brought in the fifth 
century, or not much later, " under the trammels of 
written forms." Perhaps, after all, they went bare 
only in circumstances of great excitement, as the 
Quaker matrons once did, or the Comanche, furiously 
happy, who loved to take the war-path clad in noth- 
ing but a blotch of war-paint and an unearthly yell. 

In their general designation, as in the earlier one of 
Caledonians (Woodlanders), many varying tribes must 
have been included. They derived something, no 
doubt, as they are known to have done afterwards, from 
each people along their borders, — from the Scot, whom 
Gildas describes as " differing in manners," though he 
is careful to convey no compliment ; from the Teuton, 
or Scandinavian, prowling and settling along the 
eastern coast; from the heterogeneous assemblage of 
auxiliaries along the wall. Here, too, in descendants 
c d 6 



50 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

were the more intractable of the tall ruddy folk whom 
Tacitus took note of centuries before ; and here the 
strongly-, squarely-built people who have left a deeper 
mark on tradition. The Pict of the Highland peasant 
is not at all the tattooed gentleman who figures so 
nobly in the illustrations of Sir Walter Raleigh's Ro- 
anoke narrator. But all diflSculties vanish when you 
think of them as a loosely-organized assemblage 
of tribes, with, it may be, little in common except 
their substitution of paint for clothing, or their rapa- 
cious hostility, and some peculiarities of arms, — for 
one thing, " the hooked weapons," wherewith, accord- 
ing to the ridiculous old tale, they pulled down from 
the wall its " useless" garrison which " slumbered" 
although "panic-stricken." But it is not likely that 
Gildas invented this contrivance altogether. 

The Scots, we are told, came " from the northwest," 
and this may imply either an attack on the region 
between the walls, or a descent in the neighborhood 
of Anglesey, or penetration into the lowland of 
Britain through the heart of the Welsh Mountains. 
Already they had settlements in Galloway and North 
Wales, and these must have been enlarged while 
others were formed along the more southerly coast; 
but no large city seems to have been attempted, no 
rich agricultural country laid waste, unless it were 
near the western sea. The scourge fell on the ruder 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 51 

part of the island only, and can never by itself have 
been a great danger, one would say. 

The eastern sea-kings we have briefly considered 
already. Much has been made of a supposed three- 
fold tribal division, and ingenuity has been exerted in 
finding recondite meanings for the three ships of Hen- 
gist, and the three hundred thousand men who incredi- 
bly followed him. But all were confused, and there 
can have been little real distinction. Ethel ward's 
Chronicle indeed mentions their migration (as reported) 
"from the three provinces of Germany which are 
said to have been the most distinguished, namely, from 
Saxony, Anglia, and Giota." But a few lines further 
on we read, " Britain, therefore, is now called Anglia 
(England) because it took the name of its conquerors ; 
for their leaders aforesaid were the first who came 
thence to Britain, namely, Hengist and Horsa" Now, 
Hengist and Horsa, by all other accounts, landed with 
the Jutes in Kent, and Ethelward himself elsewhere men- 
tions Wipped's-fleet as the precise spot, while also say- 
ing that " the Cantuarians derived their origin from the 
Giotse." Either Hengist and Horsa were Angles who 
sometimes led Jutes, or our chronicler is hopelessly at 
sea with regard to any real difference between the tribes. 

In other places Ethelward calls the people of Essex 
the Orientales Angli; and this in reference to the time 
of Sigebert or Ssebert. Again and again he applies 



52 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

the name "Western Angles to the people who made 
"Wessex. We know on other authority that Cerdic, 
the first great leader of the latter, drew more than 
once reinforcements from the Jutes of Kent, and that 
the South Saxons also contributed. Again, Nennius 
declares that the sons of Hengist, who must have been 
Jutish if he were so, occupied " many regions, even to 
the Pictish confines," a northern neighborhood hitherto 
given over to the Angles. Also in this quarter we meet 
with the Frisian Sea. But again, Nennius speaks of 
the " elders of the Angle race" who " attended" Hen- 
gist, seemingly in Thanet. As for Gildas, he ignores 
the Angle and Jute altogether, although he must 
have known of the early conquest near London, and 
although he refers to the traditional invitation of 
Vortigen, and perhaps also the wasting of the north 
nearly from sea to sea. 

After a century and a quarter of invasion, he has 
but one name, though many epithets, for these eastern 
invaders, — " the fierce and impious Saxons, — doggish, 
— wolfish, — bastard born, — a race hateful both to God 
and men!" Oddly enough, the northern Gael, the 
Welshman, and the Irish > have agreed to continue the 
same general designation, though it was long indeed 
before they could come in contact with the people of 
Essex, Sussex, Wessex, or Middlesex. Nor is there in 
Gildas, or other early British writers, any indication 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 53 

of such a difference among the sea-folk as he takes 
note of between the Picts and Scots, though the latter 
were so much farther away. Everything goes to show 
that there was practical identity everywhere ; or, which 
is more likely, such intermixture as would prevent 
distinction on territorial lines. 

Turning again to Ethel ward, we find Sleswig stated 
as the Anglian capital, and the very direct implication 
that the Jutes dwelt farther north, while the Saxons 
were more southerly. Our annalist is very cautious 
though. He tells us what " is said to have been ;" 
he writes " in the confusion of the times ;" he frankly 
admits his ignorance of the king "near the Jupiterean 
Mountains" who had married the aunt of his patroness ; 
and we can take him only as proving the belief of 
tenth-century England. This understood a large part 
of the Danish peninsula to be German territory ; gave 
precedence and predominance in migration to the people 
of the three provinces particularly named ; but sup- 
posed that "a large multitude joined" the settlers 
under Hengist " from every province of Germany." 

This bears out, in part, so far as it goes, the theory 
of Mr. Seebohm, and also the more recent one of Mr. 
Du Chaillu, both of which have met with a rather 
vehement but inconclusive response from Dr. Freeman 
in the Contemporary Review. The waiter first named 
finds the three-field system of culture prevalent in 

6* 



54 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

early England; but notes its "conspicuous absence" 
from Northern Germany, the home of the Angle. 
Turning southward, he avers that "it undoubtedly 
existed" in "those districts of Middle Germany 
reaching from Westphalia to Thuringia." He thinks 
it at least possible that the invaders of England may 
have proceeded thence rather than from the regions on 
the northern coast." 

Dr. Freeman cries out against the sacrilege of re- 
ducing history to the level of manure-distribution, or, 
worse still, making it a mere appendage thereto. But 
he can find no wiser reply than that " our ancestors" 
would have had sense enough to change their methods 
when changes were needed. Now, would they ? The 
most emancipated people do not easily discard inherited 
habit, even in trifles. The English horsewoman sits 
her horse on the left side for the good original reason 
that (in a country which guides left) it is plainly 
the side of safety. In America, where the rule is " turn 
to the right," the conditions are reversed, the fair 
rider's limbs and habit incurring all the danger from 
every passing vehicle. Yet, with annual loss of life, 
the senseless survival continues. Customs may change, 
no doubt, but we naturally assume the contrary until 
the change be proven. When it does occur, it is often 
the result of imitation. Out of a mixed multitude of 
settlers, with various and inconsistent methods, the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 55 

fittest plan for their new conditions will generally in 
the end prevail. We need no more assume that the 
"Saxons" who invaded Britain were all Thuringians 
than that there were no Thuringians among them. 

Mr. Dii Chaillu's contention is not at all a new one, 
unless in the extremeness of its claim. The evidence 
of language may be set against it. But that is no re- 
liable test. Negroes are not Englishmen nor Teutons 
of any sort ; but in the Southern States they commonly 
speak English only. Mr. Stuart-Glen nie assures us 
that the Scottish kingdom was mainly Celtic ; and the 
blood of the Celt may preponderate within its ancient 
boundaries to-day; yet nowhere else has the Anglo- 
Saxon tongue been preserved so nearly. In all north- 
eastern England the Danes and the Northmen have 
left their great limbs and their most distinctive features 
of personal aspect for an inheritance, and we know 
that their blood prevails where they were most plenty ; 
but what Englishman is born to speak Danish or 
Norwegian now ? One can only say that there must 
have been many Teutons in the first great onslaught 
from the east, and that there may have been many Celts 
and Scandinavians too. 

It has been said, and repeated by Mr. Sharon Tur- 
ner, writing long ago, that the Saxons were very care- 
ful while on the continent to preserve the purity of 
their race. But this can never have been true of more 



56 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

than certain classes in certain tribes. A like statement 
might be made of one Indian remnant which will not 
intermarry with " colored people," but would mislead 
if applied generally. Such scruples did not survive 
the invasion, for even Hengist was glad to secure a 
British son-in-law ; Ida took a British wife, and less 
conspicuous instances must have been common from 
the beginning. We cannot reasonably doubt that the 
foreigners who came pouring into the eastern and 
southern coast of the island during the fifth century 
were already modified in every conceivable degree by 
their conquests and interminglings on the mainland. 
We think, in the main truly, of Saxons and their 
fellow-marauders as mighty blondes, but there may well 
have been dark eyes and thin, eager faces in the throng 
that forced the passage of the Cray, and Roman noses 
and brows in the storming of Anderida. 

Beyond this, their inevitable method of approach, 
and their peculiar habit of warfare, would insure a 
different kind of intermingling. In all ages, and 
among all peoples, a ship of war is cosmopolitan. Sea- 
men belong here or there, but they belong more than 
all else to the realm of many borders, the ever-flowing 
sea. It calls them, and they are ready to ship again 
wherever found. Brownell, in a spirited battle-piece, 
shows us the New Englander, the Virginian, the 
dweller by the Mississippi, " the blue eyes from turfy 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 57 

Shannon, black orbs from palmy Niger," all manning 
the batteries of the flag-ship " Hartford" as she comes 
rushing on the iron-clad " Tennessee." He was there. 
And no doubt a far larger list might be made on any one 
of the great naval monsters now afloat. But the pirate, 
the unbiassed and uncontrollable sea-king, who wars 
for plunder, and against anybody, and all the time, is 
sure of a much more motley crew. Adventurers gather 
to him from every quarter. So they be callous, rapa- 
cious, and daring, they may be what else they will. 
And although the westward movement of the sea-faring 
Teutons ended in migration, it began in piracy. 

There are indeed these two stages in their part of 
fifth-century history. When we first nleet them, they 
are vikings on a foray. Later, as local names show, 
they are settlers who have brought their households 
and become good people of the land, kin and kin to- 
gether. There is no precise line to be drawn, and 
there may have been something of the second in the 
earlier stage from near the beginning. But in the time 
of which I now write, the first three or four decades of 
British independence, the Saxons and Angles must have 
been for the most part very mixed free-booters, de- 
scending here and there on the coast, and aiding each 
other only as caprice dictated. Something of their own 
blood was all along the Saxon Shore, J)ut probably no 
longer able or willing to aid. In Valencia, between 



58 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

the walls, it may have been diflPerent. The remnant of 
the Attacotti may have been in arms ; the Picts, by 
making a slight detour in their curraghs at sea, could 
easily join them ; and we may look to this ill-guarded 
region as the most probable quarter for early Anglo- 
Saxon settlement. Says Goeffrey of Monmouth, 
" Scotland . . . being in itself a frightful place to live 
in and wholly uninhabited, had been a safe retreat for 
strangers. By its situation it lay open to the Picts 
Scots, Dacians, Danes, Norwegians, and others that 
came to plunder the island." The statement has a 
traditional sound, if not wholly accurate ; it is made of 
a time not very much later ; and in substance he re- 
peats it. 

As to native British outbreaks in what we now call 
England and Wales, we have nothing reliable to go 
upon. Mr. Pearson puts in evidence the skulls found 
in Uriconium. But British citizens were certainly 
killed there, and there is reason to believe that the 
army of Ceawlin, which presumably slew them, in- 
cluded many individuals of Celtic or even pre-Celtic 
type. We need not suppose any earlier destruction. 
We are informed by a note of the same author 
that there is a tradition of the firing of Cirencester 
(Corineum) by sparrows having matches tied to them, 
which the " native tribes" let fly to the thatched roofs 
over the wall. But this is only a repetition of the tale 



TEE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 59 

told at Calleva and elsewhere, with the Saxons for the 
authors of the stratagem ; and we know from the Saxon 
Chronicles that Cirencester remained unconquered until 
the last quarter of the succeeding century. Native 
princes, with some shadow of power, may (as some 
think) have held court at Glevum and Anderida all 
through the Roman period. No doubt they and others 
would be tempted by the opportunity now open. The 
old Gaelic settlements along the coast of Wales would 
naturally bestir themselves occasionally at sight of the 
Scottish fleets. There may even have been risings to 
the south of the wall in aid of the Brithwr. But no 
such movements can have accomplished anything 
great, or we should have heard of them at least faintly. 
There was in some sense an invasion at this period 
from the south. Its character remains to be considered. 
It may have begun with the appeal to Honorius. The 
cry for help which could reach Italy would not fail to 
be heard by every Briton in Gaul. The legions of 
Constantine, though broken, would be in sympathy 
with revolt against his conqueror, and many stragglers 
from them would soon begin streaming over the chan- 
nel to an asylum which was made safe and sure by a 
common need. Yery likely some of their leaders 
would go with them. One tradition even brings back 
a son of the second Constantine, to win for a time the 
empire of Britain and found a long-enduring dynasty 



60 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

in Devon. In Gildas's time a Constantine of Dam- 
nonia was certainly powerful. Dr. Guest, a great 
authority, who accepts him as lineally the third of that 
name, has been at some pains in working out a con- 
jectural family-tree for this line. But we may tread 
more safely in the broad path of what must have been. 

We know that Armorica, which had been one with 
the neighboring part of Britain ever since the days of 
the Belgse, followed the islanders into rebellion against 
Rome. We know that it lay in one of the main routes 
of transit. We have reason to believe that movements 
en masse back and forth were growing more frequent 
than they ever had been during several centuries. We 
hear fantastically through romancers of great military 
expeditions, either way alternately. Likewise, by the 
monkish narratives it would seem that either shore took 
in hand the work, turn and turn about, of evangelizing 
the other. Finally, we discover an historical Eiothamus, 
a chieftain of the island, making his turbulent ten 
thousand conspicuous on the banks of the Loire. 

For, indeed, in Gaul disorder was the order of the 
day. Fragments of Roman power, fragments of sedi- 
tion, fragments of barbaric invasion, all were confusedly 
tossing together. In one last rally of the central power, 
Breton independence went down. Rome could not 
save herself, but she could make Armorica desolate. 
The hordes which crowded upon her could and would 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 61 

do so even more effectively. Billows of fire scorched 
out of being so much of Britain as lay south of the 
narrow sea. Her halls and towers were left in ruin ; 
her people in great numbers sought the main body of 
their kindred. Centuries were required to restore im- 
perfectly what had been wasted. 

This mbvement is considered by Mr. Wright a sav- 
agely hostile invasion. He believes that these Bretons 
destroyed Uriconium and settled in the region around 
it as the ancestors of the modern Welsh. But how did 
they overleap the coast country, where a more nearly 
allied idiom, not transitional, has been spoken until 
lately ? And if they sailed around Cornwall and up 
the Severn, why were they more kind to Glevum 
and its sister cities than to the bright town by the 
Wrekin? Yet these lived and prospered until long 
after, when Ceawlin came. On this hypothesis we can 
form no reasonable idea of them or their campaigns. 

It is easier to suppose that these exiles were a little 
like other human beings. Perhaps they came by 
degrees and were lost in the mass of the people. It 
may be that their presence was mainly felt in putting 
forward Celtic or anti-Romanizing candidates for the 
purple. Possibly, too, they aided in furthering a 
pagan reaction. 

Eome herself may have stimulated both these move- 
ments by her spasm of self-assertion. When the 

6 



62 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

islander saw the threatening of the eagle beyond the 
channel, and listened to the tale of guests who had 
felt the talons already, he may well have wondered 
if his own chastisement were not near. Perhaps it 
may be a straining of the words of Nennius to explain 
the "dread of the Romans" in this way; but the 
dread must have been real, nevertheless, though not 
for very long. And we can well understand that 
many might find a savor of patriotism in un-Roman 
manners and a return to pre-Christian faith. 

No doubt there had always been an opposition to 
both. Archdeacon W. Basil Jones has called atten- 
tion to evidences of pagan survival in Britain and 
Gaul, particularly a temple of the latter wherein 
the worship of a heathen deity apparently continued 
until the end of Rome. Gildas mentions the grim 
"gods of our country" as yet standing even in the 
second half of the fifth century at their neglected 
shrines. It is not surprising to hear through another 
channel that the Druids came hack to Mona for a 
time. Something of the old wildwood faith, some- 



thing of the transplanted southern Jove-worship, may 
have been hopefully astir. 

The fascination of mystery hangs about all the ele- 
ments of the life of man in those forsaken days ; and 
over none more than the beliefs and sentiments which 
are called religion. We can feel that a tumultuous con- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 63 

flict was going on ; but we can see little. With an 
apostolic ardor, a few men seem to have flung them- 
selves into battle against the host of darkness, and later 
ages believed that they wrought miracles. The statelier 
and more mundane churchmen probably gave their 
knowledge and sagacity towards keeping the ship of 
state trim and before the wind. Thus the cloud opens 
a moment, showing St. Germain and his disciples 
driving off an army of heathen plunderers in panic by 
the mighty outcry of their faith ; while Geoffrey sets 
Guitolinus before us as the spiritual and temporal father 
of his country, — a king-maker above all. This half- 
compiler, half-romancer is given to playing at parlor 
magic with a name and its fanciful suggestions. The 
Guitolin of Nennius (barely mentioned) must needs 
be fitted into some part having to do with discords 
in Britain ; — why not that of the priestly Warwick 
of the day ? Yet, others being open, it is likely this 
choice was determined by some legendary preparation 
of the public mind. 

But with all their advantage of zeal, of knowledge, 
and of position, it is probable that the men who stood 
for Christ in the main were losing ground. The set 
of the time was against them. As an establishment 
lingering over from profligate days, their members 
may here and there have lain open to indictment. A 
reaction towards Celtic simplicity would make the most 



64 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

of their self-indulgence and connivances. For oppo- 
site reasons, a brutal chieftain and his followers would 
revolt from the hot, plain words of the evangelist. 
Finally, the defeat of the Roman-British fighting- 
men at the north told heavily against the Christians. 
One field may have been divinely granted them, but 
it was very evident that no abiding miracle held back 
the heathen. The party with which they were iden- 
tified suffered blow after blow, and finally was super- 
seded altogether. Then there must have followed a 
time of great uncertainty in creed and life. There 
is temptation to linger in these shadows between 
twilight and twilight. How was it that men lived 
then ; and what like were they ? The great cities of 
the land were untouched as yet, and threatened, if at 
all, very distantly. The Roman shell in each instance 
was all there yet. The Roman body, shrunken at first, 
had filled out again in a measure by the inpouring 
from Gaul and the gathering of the country. 
Weaker elements had been rubbed away in part. 
Men had been startled at least a little out of effemi- 
nacy. The Celtic memories were modifying the 
habits of later Rome. The religious reformer and 
social reformer, though often jarring, were yet at work 
together. 

The citizen went as of old to loiter at the public 
bath, but he had somewhat more to talk about and think 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. Q^ 

about tlian before. He sent his son to serve in arms, but 
no longer as an exile, from whom he might never hear 
again. He aided in walling his city, crudely but mas- 
sively, and took (for he widened her defensive area) an 
increasing pride in her populousness. He dined, Roman- 
fashion, in larger apartments than those of his fore- 
fathers, and he made repairs in them, not over-tasteful. 
He spoke Latin, but with more and more of Celtic de- 
basement, and knew at least one or two of the native 
island tongues. He had a few books, no doubt, in 
manuscript, but was falling out of the way of caring for 
or preserving them. He took part in the conferences 
at the basilica, and gave his vote for the petition of 
some subject territory, or against yielding to the 
pretensions of some growing princelet of the hills 
and moors, or to complete a league offensive and 
defensive with a bevy of friendly towns. When there 
was rumor of disturbance, he took his spear and went 
with his acquaintances to garrison the wall. In quiet 
times, and they were oftenest, he carried on his ac- 
customed business in the accustomed way, using the 
familiar means and lines of transit. Gold and silver 
were sometimes in circulation, sometimes not, and 
values gradually accommodated themselves to the 
latter condition, brass coins being made to do most 
of the work, but very greatly increased in volume. 
For this new mintage old devices were used ; some- 
e 6* 



QQ THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

times, very naturally, those of elder British " tyrants" 
who had withstood Rome. It is likely that these 
were struck in different cities, for we find the latter 
retaining even in Saxon times the right of individual 
issue, which, Mr. Pearson holds, can have arisen in 
this curious interval only. 

Such is perhaps as good an account as we can now 
give of the life of an urban Briton in Silchester or 
Cirencester or Lenborough, then still bearing their 
Roman names. Farther north, of course there would 
be more disquiet, more alarm ; and perhaps this would 
everywhere be true of the isolated villas, where such 
were still in occupancy. Serfs no doubt were grow- 
ing self-assertive, restive, hard to control. Some were 
joining the retinues of half-wild chiefs, and must 
thereafter be fed by exaction or foray. Private 
feuds were on the increase. Even the plain husband- 
man, though relieved of some burdens, could not 
bring himself to work as diligently as of old. A 
sense of expectancy, colored dark or bright by pre- 
dilection, was on all. This wa&_aggravated or quieted 
by the changing military situation, but on the whole 
grew apace. 

The first assault of the barbarians probably over- 
came most of the outlying fortified settlements beyond 
the Firth of Forth, although we may reasonably 
picture an Aberdeen or Inverness holding out for a 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 67 

long time, beyond rescue and nearly beyond memory, 
— as indeed happened not long ago in the Soudan. 
Gildas, following a long and vague tradition, de- 
clares that the whole region was occupied by the 
invaders, as far as "the wall," which Ethelward 
interprets "the wall of Severus." But the more 
northern line of defence can hardly have fallen at 
once. Probably it was outflanked on each side, and 
remained a reef, with a bit of crag at either end, 
in the lapping and raging (front and rear) of that 
wild human sea. The British commander (whether 
Cunedda or another) could not save it, could not even 
hold his ground along the southern line. All Valeu- 
tia, between the walls, lay dismally at choice between 
the devil of savagery and the real ocean, and when the 
warders were dragged from the wall and the enemy 
poured, slaughtering, over and through, the condition 
of the next province became nearly the same. 
Probably there were many Saxon free lances among 
the marauders, for a foreign writer of the next decade 
or so mentions the " provinces of Britain" as already 
subject to that people. Modern investigation has un- 
earthed near Carlisle the relics of this great foray, — 
the charred timbers of the old Roman station at 
Maryport, the skeletons of men, in their last refuge, 
who fought perhaps from street to street and from 
room to room during the sacking and burning of 



68 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Eibchester. Possibly it was this same inroad which 
first drove the unhappy provincials of Yorkshire, with 
their short-horned herds and their enamelled jewelry, 
to seek a dismal refage in the cliff-caverns of King's 
Scaur, fifteen hundred feet above the sea. 

There is said to have been a new appeal to Rome, 
in spite of the long estrangement; but it effected 
nothing. And now the Celtic element of the West 
came forward to supremacy. The North, worn out 
with ill fortune, gave way ; and the purple rested on 
the shoulders of Guorthegirn or Vortigern, prince of 
Demetia. At Caer Gloui, the Roman Glevum, now 
Gloucester, he is said to have held court, as had a long 
line of ancestry before him, over the fertile regions 
about the Severn. There is reason to think that a 
native ruler was allowed by Rome to mint coins at this 
place bearing his name, and to exercise, rajah-like, 
under supervision, more or less of local sway; and 
afler a time we find Vortigern there with the claim to 
a long pedigree. That is all we know, if we can be 
said to know anything, concerning the matter. Mr. 
Whittaker explains his name as a slight variation of 
Vor Tighairn, meaning Great King. 

This may be no more than another synonyme for 
" imperator ;" yet we can hardly insist on holding it 
BO, unless we are prepared to rule out Lord and Earl,- 
Prince and King, from the list of credible surnames. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 69 

Few others, nevertheless, have given rise to so much 
extravagance in speculation. Mr. Coode is good enough 
to furnish him with Teutonic spelling and lineage, in- 
sisting that he has been put on the wrong side alto- 
gether, and led, in reality, a band of pirates to the 
invasion of Britain. Professor Rhys advances the 
more cruel hypothesis that he is an illusion entirely, 
a myth built up out of the character and the doings of 
Gerontius, the connecting link being that the latter was 
born in Britain. 

The parallel is certainly notable j but there was a 
generation between the men ; and there is nothing sur- 
prising in the fact that two thus separated should sever- 
ally have had some hand in introducing the barbarians. 
In detail, the stories fall apart very widely ; Vortigern 
acts partly through policy, partly through love; Ge- 
rontius through malignant jealousy. Vortigern invites 
the Saxon, by the advice of counsellors, to a realm 
which he controls; Gerontius instigates their assault 
on his native country for the injury done him by its 
ruler. Gerontius never enters Britain after the begin- 
ning of his treason ; Vortigern is never intentionally 
a traitor, and never goes out of it. Probably the idea 
would not have suggested itself to any one but for that 
fluent Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was never at a loss 
to eke out one story with another. 



CHAPTER lY. 

THE DAYS OF EOWENA. 

VoRTiGEEN must have been ripe in age as well as 
in popularity when he attained the sovereign power, for 
his sons were leaders of men, soon after Hengist came ; 
that is to say, in the fourth year of his supremacy. He 
must have commanded with ability, for the northern 
marauders withdrew, and the land was free to breathe 
again. He seems to have introduced or continued a 
sort of parliament, or council of the island. " All the 
counsellors" would indicate more than an adviser or 
^two, and their place is before himself in the passage. 

This much in his favor. On the other side he is 
charged by a monkish interpolator of the original 
Nennius with the shocking offence of marrying his 
own daughter ; but this probably arises from confusion 
with his descendant Vortipore, against whom Gildas 
brings the same indictment. At all events, there is 
no corroboration whatever. Probably as a nominal 
Christian who allowed the devil to seduce him into 
wedlock with a pagan lady, he was thought quite open 
to suspicion. The Welsh, with a more patriotic ill- 
will, have dubbed him " Vortigern of the repulsive 
mouth ;" whereby we at least may infer that he was 
70 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 71 

not conspicuous for manly beauty. But, aside from 
the introduction of the Saxons, there really does not 
seem to be anything definite against him. And, as 
already shown, this cannot be laid wholly to his charge 
or to that of his generation. 

Mr. Pearson wisely observes that the history of the 
southern part of the island has been mistaken for the 
history of the whole. The fortune of war and the 
chance of letters made this inevitable. A single writer 
(Gildas) of King Arthur's court, escaping from that 
downfall across the channel, put on record (a.d. 560) 
a burst of stormy invectives which embodies our nearest 
approach to a contemporary history of Vortigern's day. 
A school of Cumbrian poets (a.d. 550 to 600) left 
their stirring battle-lays by imperfect oral transition to 
be gathered and written down in a more literary time. 
A monk (probably), of whom we know nothing, but 
who may have been Nennius of Bangor, strung to- 
gether (a.d. 600 to 700) so much of meagre history 
and impossible legend as would justify "Historia Bri- 
tonnum" on the title-page. To this various additions 
of less authority were made at various times during the 
next four centuries. A leading subdivision of the con- 
querors collected and embalmed as dry chronicle what- 
ever of earlier fact was yet (a.d. 700 to 800) extant in 
memoranda or recital. At divers times, altogether 
uncertain, but probably in part not much later, the 



72 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Welsh, for similar reasons, embodied their national 
recollection more poetically in the form of tales and 
triads, which suffer from later imitation and forgery, 
so that not many are relied on. These, with some later 
gleanings in the field of tradition, and some side-lights 
from the continent, make up the entire array of our 
information. Nearly all of them relate chiefly to the 
southern, southeastern, and southwestern counties of 
England; or are so uncertain in allusion that men 
quarrel over them forever; or have to do with the 
North after the dissolution of Arthur's realm, and the 
upbuilding of that of Ida. Of the earlier independent 
British North, which had Isurium and the cities of 
the wall for its ornaments and Eboracum for its heart 
and capital, we can hardly be said to know anything 
definitely. Yet there was no wealthier, no more highly- 
civilized region in the whole land than this which has 
left no record of its tragical passing away. 

The ignorance of Gildas with regard to it was so 
great that he could speak of Durham and Carlisle, the 
great human buttresses of the main wall, as "some 
cities (unnamed) which by chance had been built there." 
But he had other and graver disqualifications. Fanat- 
ically Christian, fanatically moral, fanatically Roman, 
he could see nothing good in the semi-heathen present, 
and believe nothing good of the Celt in the past. How 
far this blindness could carry him is shown in his 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 73 

diatribe on the " deceitful lioness," who dared resent 
the compliment of the " Eoman rods." The wild 
warriors, who all but conquered with her, are " crafty 
foxes" to him. It would be interesting to hear Gildas 
on the unreasonable complaint of the daughters of 
Boadicea. But (there being soldiers of Rome in the 
episode) he lets this pass in silence, our furious apostle 
of purity ! 

With Nennius and the Chronicles, the bias takes a 
different turn. The former was British in a time when 
the early virulent divisions had died away ; the latter 
were the work of Englishmen who had outgrown in 
part the love of slaughter, but felt a Celtic foe on their 
frontier still. Neither will admit very much in favor 
of the other. The battles are victories for both sides, 
or passed lightly over by the one which lost. Nennius 
knows nothing of the storming of Anderida. The 
Saxons have no direct allusion to Mount Badon. 

But, all the more, when these agree in the main 
features of a story we must accept that story as true 
excepting only where common causes would distort 
every one alike. This agreement establishes that the 
British ruler, being menaced by the northern tribes, 
called to his aid the marauders of the German Sea; 
that these took service under him as mercenaries, and 
aided in beating back their former allies ; that in re- 
ward they secured a foothold, where reinforcements 
D 7 



74 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

increased their numbers; that they quarrelled with 
their employers, took up the more familiar rdle of 
assailant again, and finally overran a great part of 
Britain. 

The accounts diifer in detail and in matter of em- 
bellishment ; for example, as to whether the new people 
were invited over from Germany or were merely de- 
scried sailing along the coast and offered by Yortigern 
their golden opportunity ; as to whether there was or 
was not a treacherous massacre of the British leaders ; 
as to whether the southeastern corner of the island was 
won by force of arms or by intimidation and a half- 
compulsory treaty. On some of these points we can,, 
pronounce absolutely in favor of one narrator or 
another; and in nearly every instance there are the 
means of giving at least a reasonable guess as to the 
truth. In the minds of them all the landing at Thanet 
and the long struggle to reach London seem to have 
taken a disproportionate place. Just thus, a quarter 
of a century ago, the dwellers in Washington and 
Richmond, seeing and hearing one shattering campaign 
after another in the battle-country between their earth- 
works, found it hard to believe that the war was not 
mainly there. Yet meanwhile a great section of a con- 
tinent was being rent away from the losing combatant, 
between the Appalachian ridge and the Mississippi 
river, and at last the great weight of the conquerors 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 75 

came crashing through the narrow neck that remained, 
quite to the sea. 

If we give Hengist credit for design, we must not 
suppose him so improvident as to begin his conquest 
only at the very tip of Kent, with the all but impreg- 
nable fortresses of Richborough, Reculver, Rochester, 
and London staring him full in the face. If we sup- 
pose him landing at first in good faith, to fight the 
invaders from beyond the wall, we are equally driven 
to a more northerly shore. One account says, we know 
not how authoritatively, that the Picts had reached 
Stamford in Lincolnshire, probably keeping to the open 
country between the cities as they came ; that Hengist 
and his men were the main instruments of their defeat 
near that place ; and that the Saxon leader obtained 
by stratagem from Vortigern sufficient land for a forti- 
fied settlement at Thongcaster on that coast. This 
accords so well with the needs of the time and the 
natural order of events that we may accept it without 
much danger. 

At any rate, if the Saxons served at the north at all, 
they must have followed their retreating enemy through 
scenes that might well bewilder them with beauty. 
The wealth of Lindom, of York, of Isurium, — greater 
than ever for the time by the sudden concentration of all 
the surrounding country within those walls, — must have 
dazzled them and tempted them beyond bearing. The 



76 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

pillared rows, the bright tessalse, the delicate carven 
vine-work, the architectural magnificence and splendor, 
may have been wasted on them in a measure, but left, 
no doubt, an abiding sense of illimitable booty. And 
where the naked Scot and tattooed savage had been so 
nearly, why should not they be, in turn, conquerors by 
a double conquest ? Back to their lair they would go 
with fire in their hearts ; and no payment would seem 
sufficient for its placating. This northern service 
afforded probably the lure which drew the great horde 
of sea-faring plunderers into Britain. 

But there was no breach as yet ; it may be no con- 
scious intention looking that way. Hengist and Horsa 
had deserved well of the island empire, and were allowed 
to take up their abode not very far from the capital ; 
indeed, at a stone's-throw from its main port, though 
cut off by a narrow fortified arm of the sea. With the 
last desolation of the Pict, Eboracum surely had lost 
her supremacy, and there was none but London whereon 
the mantle could fall. At London, Hengist would 
be a frequent visitor, with wise counsel on points of 
war. From London, Vortigern could set out with 
little toil for relaxation by the Wantsum with this new 
right arm of his realm. He seems to have been a con- 
vivial monarch, and susceptible to female charms. 
We all know the story of how these together overcame 
him. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 77 

But it was a high price every way that he paid for 
Rowena. His own adult family, as a matter of course, 
were bitter against the alliance, and from what followed 
it seems likely that many of his Celtic adherents went 
with them. The Romanizing opposition found a bril- 
liant young leader in Ambrosius, and were threatening 
rebellion. The Church was growling and thundering 
over him. Christian, British, and Roman indignation 
flashed and darkened together at this unheard-of 
yoking with the intruding heathen savage. But it 
was too late to draw back, and a common unpopularity 
bound him more and more tightly to Hengist. 

The latter lost no time in strengthening himself by 
every means. Reinforcements were called over in 
alarming numbers, and to quiet apprehension were 
sent north, under his sons Octa and Ebissa, with a 
vague grant of lands and a pretence of keeping the 
Picts in check. This they did, incidentally wasting 
the Orkneys, and probably reviving some confidence 
in the Britons just south of the wall, whom they re- 
lieved. Their campaigns were probably not ended in 
one year, nor their influx with the first wave, since we 
are told by Nennius that they "took possession of 
many regions." Most likely their early settlements 
came straggling from Valentia down towards their old 
fastness of Thongcaster, all along that eastern coast. 

Meanwhile, the Lincolnshire settlement was no doubt 
7* 



78 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

growing also, and that on Thanet overflowed the isle, 
emboldening the Saxon leader to demand the over- 
lordship or kingship of Kent. By this time Vorti- 
gern must have felt sorely bested, but he could 
not refuse without bringing on open war; so he ac- 
ceded, and thereby did very much the same thing in 
another way. For this gift was a robbery. 

The tumults of that time are out of all elucidation, 
but we learn from Nennius that Guoryangus, the 
rightful ruler of the district, was in "grief" at his 
dispossession. This would hardly have been recorded 
if it had ended there. Probably regret became active 
resistance. In much the same fashion, an appendix 
gently tells us of " the quarrel between Ambrosius and 
Guitolin . . . which is Guoloppum, that is, Cat- 
gwaloph," i.e., the battle of Wallop. Sometimes they 
understated, and sometimes they overstated, in the olden 
time. As for the last-named leader, we may guess 
with very great freedom. Possibly he was a competitor 
for the countship of the Saxon shore. So says one 
item which I have gathered, authority unknown. Or 
the ecclesiastical account of him already given may be 
so far correct ; and perhaps on the whole this is most 
likely. We cannot doubt that the odium theologicum 
was by this time very near the crusading point, of 
course with some leader. 

Besides these three disturbing elements, there prob- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 79 

ably were others. Mr. Greeu is inclined to believe that 
a general rising took place of the rural and urban folk 
against each other. Mr. Pearson goes further, making 
Vortigern the head of the town party, and Hengist 
and Octa its very especial champions. But this last 
deliverance appears to be a freak of fancy, for every- 
thing goes to show that Vortigern was the champion 
of the Celtic party, which was necessarily weaker in 
the cities; and the ashes of Isurium bear their witness 
against the Saxon. Yet no doubt almost any kind of 
disorder may have been afoot. The lawful head of 
the country had gone over to the yet undeclared enemy, 
or was vibrating between friend and foe. No wonder 
Hengist found he had to deal with a " fluctuating 
people !" 

We can easily understand how this state of affairs 
would aid in another way to bring on a crisis. The 
Saxons come as mercenaries; and although they had 
been granted a little territory, a modicum of dominion, 
they were not to be appeased without regular rations 
and increasing pay. On the other hand, their pay- 
masters, who might have to fight them at any moment, 
must have found the tax particularly odious. The 
power of withholding supplies will lie somewhere 
under even the most imperfect government. It will 
surely be thought of as a weapon, when disagreement 
occurs with the executive. There may have been 



80 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

more than one day, when the remoter districts with- 
held all tribute ; when the cities in the Roman inter- 
est and the centres of religious life angrily refused it ; 
when the council of Britain declared with covert 
satisfaction that it was altogether unable to replenish 
the treasury ; when even Vortimer, the darling of the 
Celt, the Prince of Wales, in a very emphatic sense, 
came forward to say that it was time for the strangers 
to be gone. 

In such a quarrel, the right may well have been 
with each, or seemed so to be. To the Saxon, the 
Briton was a faithless ingrate, rightly given over to 
destruction ; an effeminate cumberer of the earth ; a 
noisy, unstable mixture of the voluptuary and the 
pharisee. What the Briton thought of the Saxon 
we have seen in Gildas already. The outcome is in 
half a sentence of Ethel ward, — "All parties fly to 
arms, the Britons give way." But its terseness may 
easily mislead. 

The north must have been ill prepared after its 
losses by foray. When the word came to Octa and 
his hardy, hungry raiders, and they rushed inland from 
points of vantage like Scarborough and Flamborough, 
or urged their oars up the great estuary of the Hum- 
ber, no force may have been available which could 
hold them in check, unless behind the walls of the 
larger cities. Quoting Gildas, " The fire of vengeance 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 81 

spread from sea to sea, fed by the hands of our foes 
in the east, and did not cease until, destroying the 
neighboring towns and lands, it reached the other 
side of the island and dipped its red and savage 
tongue in the western ocean." If this were not at 
the north, where was it? Unless then and there, the 
" western ocean" was not reached overland by the 
invaders until long after the date of his writing. It 
is possible that in the course of these onsets a light 
party might occasionally push clear across the waist 
of the island, setting a few western villages in a 
blaze. But, perhaps, it is more likely that Gildas 
and his rhetoric went astray. 

It was not the work of one season nor of one decade. 
Wave after wave dashed in through the open country 
and withdrew, or settled about the isolated cities, hold- 
ing them in leaguer. At last, in some unguarded 
moment, or some unusually heavy onfall, the defence 
gave way — and the heathen were among the houses. 
Then altars were overturned ; then marble columns 
were hurled from their pedestals by blow on blow 
of the battering-ram ; then the great mass of the 
basilica and the towers along the walls came crashing 
down; then fled they all together, "bishops, priests, 
and people, whilst the sword gleamed and the flames 
crackled around them on every side." They sought 
— when they might — the wild moorland valleys with 



82 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

cliff-caverns looking out on them ; no secure hiding 
place from any permanent foe who knew the land, 
but such as would answer their turn for awhile with 
the soon ebbing se^-rovers. 

Here with their short-horn cattle they came, their 
horses tethered on the grass below, their sheep and 
sheep-dogs, their weapons and jewelry, and all that 
made up the household life of civilized women and 
men. Not once only, nor in a single party, nor from 
a single quarter, nor ever for long; but again and 
again, as the need returned, with stores varying as 
their condition varied. This at any rate seems the 
most plausible explanation of the diversity in the 
Victoria cavern relics. I cannot believe with Mr. 
Green that this unsuitable asylum was clung to per- 
versely by any one body of refugees, until their pots 
and spindles gave out and were replaced by pitiful 
make-shifts, and they lost even the memory of the 
culture from which they came. It must also be said 
that he has set far too late a date for the beginning of 
these northern conquests. 

Yet we may well admire the brilliant application 
made by him of physical geography and local nomen- 
clature in illustrating the dark places of history. 
The method is that of Dr. Guest, but pursued with 
a greater elaboration of detail and over a wider area. 
Little can be added to it, at least in the present state 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 83 

of knowledge. No doubt Lindsey and Holderness 
were the first regions to be overrun, lying as they do 
on either side of the Humber, that great portal of the 
north. Derventio, near the first capital and main set- 
tlement of the Deirans, may well have fallen soon after. 
Others would follow here and there; either stormed 
and entirely laid waste, or admitted to some such 
composition as Mr. Pearson supposes, — that is, each 
allowed to live on more or less according to its old 
routine with a watchful Saxon settlement looking in 
upon it from some neighboring stockaded hill. But 
perhaps they had hardly secured any strong position 
on the great northern way before the first reaction 
bore them back. 

At the south the field is limited ; the defences are 
fairly well known ; the Chronicles and Nennius contain 
fragmentary records of the events, from opposite points 
of view. Gildas is silent, but then he could hardly 
speak without magnifying the Celtic Vortimer, the 
right arm of the Britons. 

The first battle mentioned by the Saxons — with the 
date of 455 — was fought by Hengist and Horsa "against 
Vortigern in the plain of -3]gelsthrep," which Dr. 
Guest identifies with the lowest ford on the Medway. 
This is a rather long march from Thanet, but the doctor, 
himself a notable pedestrian, will have them there over 
land. Mr. Green, accepting this hypothesis, and elab- 



84 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

orating it after his fashion, has given us a fascinating 
panorama of the campaign, — a panorama so vivid that 
it ought to be true ! We see the fierce ocean- warriors 
bursting across the Wantsum between the two great 
fortresses ; wading the marshes of the Stour under the 
rain of missiles from the doomed walls of Durovernum ; 
clambering the woody heights of Blean with the blaze 
of the city far behind them and the whole panic-stricken 
country-side rushing wildly on ahead ; forcing the pas- 
sage of the Medway, where the British imperator has 
hurriedly taken his stand for the salvation of West 
Kent; driving the fight up doggedly through the 
village of Aylesford, till Horsa and Categirn fall 
(some say in single fight) and the Saxons halt on the 
ground they have won, raising Hengist with acclaim 
in full form to be their king. 

But, excepting the outcome, this can hardly have 
been so. The story assumes too hastily that there were 
no Saxon defeats before the first ' Saxon victory. Nen- 
nius, in what is probably the oldest part of the work, 
declares, "At length Vortimer, the son of Vortigern, 
valiantly fought against Hengist, Horsa, and his people; 
drove them to the isle of Thanet, and thrice enclosed 
them (that is, no doubt, triple-walled them) within it, 
and beset them on the western side." He repeats, also, 
with detail, " Four times did Vortimer valorously en- 
counter the enemy. The first has been mentioned, the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 85 

second was upon the river Darent, the third at the Ford, 
in their language called Eppsford, though in ours Set- 
thirgabail ; the fourth battle he fought was near the 
stone on the shore of the Gallic sea, where the Saxons, 
being defeated, fled to their ships." 

This last entry is in itself a refutation of an error 
common to nearly all writers on the subject, — they 
tacitly assuming that the sea-kings had already for- 
saken the sea. In point of fact, the Saxon endeavors 
were more often by water than by land for the next 
hundred years. Especially must this have been the 
case with such a region as the Caint, having a water- 
front for more than half its boundary and water-courses 
opening here and there into its very heart. 

If we assume London to have been his immediate 
objective, the theory is even less plausible. By the 
admission of his enemy, Hengist " united craft and 
penetration." Are we then to believe that he neg- 
lected the most obvious expedients of generalship ? 
Why should he incur the fearful hazard of crossing a 
navigable strait between two hostile fortresses with a 
strong force in his front, while the whole seaward face 
of his island lay open and the mouth of the Thames 
lay open too ? However it might be on shore, he had 
absolute command of the water. Both habit and cir- 
cumstance made it his most natural means of transpor- 
tation. 

8 



86 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

But at the beginning of the contest there is reason 
to believe that very little transportation was needed. 
He may have been in peaceable possession of the 
country as far as the Medway, under Vortigern's ir- 
regular cession. When Hengist found himself, by 
imperial grant, the sovereign of all Kent, he was hardly 
the man to let it remain a title only. We are told by 
Nennius that " Hengist continued by degrees sending 
for ships from his own country . . . and/' seemingly 
as a result, " whilst his people were increasing in power 
and number they came to the above-named province 
of Kent." Where was he before the later accessions ? 
In Thanet, evidently. It had been severed from Kent 
of the mainland both by nature and by treaty. To 
this mainland Kent the overflow must have been 
directed ; and we may be sure that he would push the 
work of peaceful occupancy as fast and as far as the 
Britons would let him. Even if there were to be a 
war, this might well seem his wisest policy. 

The frontier cities, in their bewilderment, would at 
first be glad to make some compensation ; some ac- 
knowledgment of him as their overlord in return for 
the assurance of safety. The partial destruction of 
Durovernum, indicated by Mr. Green, may seem to 
make against this theory ; but it need not have occurred 
until later, when there was ample opportunity and 
provocation, as we shall see. Moreover, Mr. Pearson 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 87 

has pointed out that the town (under the name of 
Canterbury) still inherits much of privilege and organ- 
ization from this earlier day. He tells us the same of 
Rochester and other places in East Kent. Certainly, 
facts like these point to survival by compromise ; just 
as the custom of gavelkind points to an unwarlike 
surrender by the Kentish Saxou, long afterwards. 

Very likely, though, his new authority had become 
irksome to the people, even before Vortimer openly 
withstood or assailed him. In that case, its collapse 
would follow soon. Whichever side took the ojBFensive, 
the first battle was a defeat for Hengist, probably in 
the eastern part of "West Kent, the scene of so many 
later struggles. A general rising of the country 
already occupied would aid in throwing him back upon 
his island lair. The oval walls of Durovernum would 
refuse him admittance and send forth parties to harass 
the flank of his retreat. The dispossessed Guorang (to 
accept the more manageable version of that name) would 
hurry to take part in the lively chase. The watchful 
Eoman-Britons of Rutupise and Reculver would cross 
their spears from side to side before the deep natural 
fosse which cut his line of escape. It is probable that 
he won temporary safety only by bursting through 
them into Thanet with heavy loss. He cannot have 
saved more than a part of the mainland settlers. Then 
came Vortimer with his men ; and the three great lines 



88 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

of earthwork were thrown up, reaching, no doubt, from 
the one fortress to the other. With the Wantsum of 
that day for a moat, and a British army behind them 
elate with victory, these triple fortifications may well 
have seemed, and have been, impregnable to the in- 
vader. He had good cause to tremble for even his 
last foothold in southern Britain. 

Such is a conjectural outline of the first campaign, 
of which we find on record little more than the causes 
and the ending. I claim for it only more complete 
harmony with all our information than any preceding 
theory. 

Of course, in his calamity he would send for all 
available reinforcements ; calling, for example, every 
man who could be spared from the more prosperous 
forces at the north. As his strength grew again, his 
aggressive confidence revived. Moreover, he had too 
many men for his little island. Of this they would 
not fail to remind him. Nor would they be content 
for their ships (or long-boats as we should call them 
now) to be idle, knowing full well that the Britons 
were no match for them on the water. Vortimer 
must have had some sort of flotilla, but it probably 
retreated up the Thames, towards London, when the 
enemy drew near, and closed the channel in some way 
behind it at the first narrowing of the river. This was 
the natural thing to do, if time allowed. It would 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 89 

compel the landing of Hengist on the Kent shore then 
and there, which seemingly was just what happened. 

But once ashore the chances were against him. 
Vortimer hastened back from Rutupise to head him 
off, or sallied from the capital with the forces gathered 
there. Hengist may have found himself between two 
fires. At any rate, he could not carry the first line of 
defence that crossed his way. Somewhere along the 
little river Parent, the Celt and the Teuton, as we call 
them, came to spear-thrust and sword-play until the 
invader sullenly withdrew. His fleet most likely bore 
him to his earthworks in Thanet again. 

We cannot suppose that Vortimer, twice victor in 
Kent, would remain quiescent thereafter. The north, 
worn and harried by repeated inroads, and ill organized 
for struggling against them, must have called him, 
surely not without response. The first great rally of 
the Britons, under his leadership, may have beaten 
back the Anglo-Saxons well eastward of the great lines 
of communication. If London were to be really the 
seat of government for the island, he must keep these 
under his hand at any cost. Perhaps he made Octa 
as much a prisoner in Holderness and the lowlands of 
Lincolnshire' and the waste country north of Durham 
as Hengist himself was in the insular tip of Kent. 
No doubt, also, he appeased contention within the land. 
Even the Eoman faction may have begun to feel some 

8* 



90 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

hope in the reigning dynasty. A monkish legend, 
inserted in one version of Nennius, represents Vortimer 
as even humiliating himself to conciliate the Church 
that his father had angered. On the other side, even 
that father was obliged to become active in patriotic 
duty. The next contest, bj the Saxon account, was 
with Vortigern himself; but this probably means no 
more than nominal leadership, for Nennius explicitly 
awards the honor of victory to his more heroic son. 

This is the fight near Aylesford, with which Dr. 
Guest and Mr. Green have begun. There may be fair 
excuse for doing so, in the prominence that each side 
has given it, and in the results immediately following. 

Hengist was afloat again with a- mighty company in 
that year, a.d. 455. He took the old course, for it 
was the only one towards London which he could take 
sanely. The Essex shore presented a waste of marshes 
and lagoons at that day, where his advancing forces 
might be taken at disadvantage and cut off to a man. 
The river, of course, was no longer open. Probably 
Vortimer had found means to block the channel at an 
even lower point than before. At any rate, Hengist 
evidently took to land on the Kent side before reach- 
ing the mouth of the Med way. * 

Turning southward from Rochester, which he had 
no time to trifle with, he came face to face with his 
enemy in great force at the first passage of the stream. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 91 

It must have been a very obstinately contested conflict. 
Each army lost a noted chief, a brother of its com- 
mander. Each claimed the victory. The assailants 
made Hengist king of Kent, by some rude coronation, 
on the field which he had won. The defenders gave 
it the name " Sassanseg habsel," — the slaughter of the 
Saxons, — and set down one more triumph to the ac- 
count of Yortimer. The former were right, in so far 
as the position of their enemy had been carried, and 
that enemy driven back. The latter were right, in so 
far as the main design of Hengist was thwarted. This 
time, nevertheless, he maintained his footing on the 
border of West Kent, and probably reduced a part of 
the country behind him. 

Of course there would be frequent skirmishing be- 
tween his people, in their two isolated possessions by 
the Wantsum and the Med way, and the string of angry 
hornet-nests along the shore, — Dover and Lyme, Recul- 
ver and Richborough. Of course, too, at the north 
warfare must have been awake again. Yet two years 
went by before he felt strong enough to attack once 
more the army which covered London. 

This time he had not far to go. There may have 
been opposition, as before, at the passing of the Darent ; 
but the main battle is believed to have been on the 
Cray, "a little stream which falls through a quiet 
valley from the chalk downs, hard by at Orpington." 



92 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

There was no quiet on this little stream that day. 
Four thousand British corpses were strewn about the 
valley, during the havoc of fight and flight, and also 
well over the Middlesex marshes towards Southwark. 
The Saxon Chronicle tells us of the fear with which the 
routed forces fled into London ; Ethelward repeats the 
story a little more mildly ; even Nennius bears witness 
to it by his silence. 

Yet, for some reason, the victor did not pursue his 
advantage. London was not captured, or we should 
have heard thereof. It was indeed all but impregnable 
if adequately manned. Nor could men and weapons 
long be wanting. No doubt a great cry for aid was 
answered by the gleam of spear-heads on every foot of 
the wall. No doubt, also, the British forces under 
Vortimer soon took the offensive again. Mr. Green 
points out that the lost ground was all very quickly 
regained. The steps we can only infer, — an assault on 
the Saxon here, a dislodgement there, a probable cut- 
ting off from the Thames, a distressful retreat across 
the body of the Caint, with a swarm of enemies hover- 
ing and darting in about the flanks and rear, a long 
disastrous campaign of which Nennius, after his usual 
fashion, gives us only the sequel, " on the shore of the 
Gallic sea." No doubt Thanet was quite large enough 
again for the men of Hengist. Just across the strait, 
Vortimer ever sat watching, and when, after a short 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 93 

interval, he sickened and died, he was buried at Eu- 
tupise, the main port of London, that, dead or living, 
his eye should be on them still. 

But Nennius will have it that more than this had 
been on his mind. " Anxious for the future prosperity 
of his country, he charged his friends to inter his body 
at the entrance of the Saxon port, — viz., upon the rock 
where the Saxons first landed ; * for though,' said he, 
' they may inhabit other parts of Britain, yet, if you 
follow my commands, they will never remain in this 
island' " According to Ethelward, this landing-place 
was Wipped's-fleet, on the isle of Thanet. Nor can 
" this island" have any other meaning. 

His dying request, if real, may have more wisdom 
in it than is on the surface now. It called for no less 
than the dislodgement of the foreigners from their last 
foothold, and its permanent occupancy as his sepulchre. 
He may have relied on the intensity of his followers' 
devotion for one final onslaught which nothing could 
withstand ; and for a long guardianship, making one 
bit of British soil invincible. 

Again the meaning — the after-thought of a later time 
— may be that so solemn an appropriation would pre- 
vent all revelry there. For, be it known that Wip- 
ped's-fleet became the scene of the murderous feast 
of the long knives. 

Whatever the intention, it was not carried into effect. 



94 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Perhaps the sea-folk were too grim, as they stood on 
the last fringe of the land, very desperately at bay. 
Perhaps Yortigern was wrought upon through Rowena, 
since an apochryphal triad tells us that to please her 
he even made exposure of his dead heroic son. There 
was some falling short, at any rate. " They impru- 
dently disobeyed his last injunction, and neglected to 
bury him where he had appointed." Yet the Saxon 
may have had a brisk alarm ; for he was " strengthened 
by new accessions," " assisted by foreign pagans," and 
"firmly incorporated" in the island he had been so 
near leaving. He " collected his ships and consulted 
by what strategem they might overcome Vortigeru and 
his army." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PEINCE OF THE SANCTUARY. 

Hengist may well have felt that his opportunity 
had come. For years he had been crashing pain- 
fully against a resistance which gave way now a little, 
now not at all, but invariably in the end beat him 
back. The campaigns which he inaugurated were only 
a means of educating his enemies. He had trained 
them ; he had hardened them ; he saw them contin- 
ually before him, a force in every way more than equal 
to his own. But, besides himself, he must thank for 
this the will, the skill, and the daring which taught 
them at the first how to make good their stand. In 
the wavering that had been already, it was plainly to 
be seen that " Guorthemer of blessed memory" was 
indeed only a memory now. The life of the British 
army lay in the cluster of chieftains who had fought 
so long under him and still maintained his tradition 
of leadership. Panic and paralysis would follow, if 
these could be tempted aside and suddenly swept away. 

The tale of that fatal banquet, though often doubted, 

is probably true. The same thing had been done in 

Thuringia, and even on a lesser scale, by Eoman gen- 

95 



96 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

erals. It has been repeated, with slight modification, 
by Western frontiersmen of our own day. Precedents 
are incentives — to a fifth-century pirate, in no very great 
need of them. If we are to disbelieve everything 
monstrous, we must throw away history and the news- 
papers together. The earlier facts or legends that 
have been thought to give a mythical air to the story 
are really its corroboration. In later times it was 
placed at Stonehenge, — erroneously, for nothing could 
have taken Hengist there ; but Nennius does not men- 
tion that place. Perhaps the slaughter, long afterwards, 
of Natanleod and his five thousand may have led Geof- 
frey and others astray. 

As Vortigern and his nobles came by invitation, the 
banquet must have been set on the isle of Thanet. 
Wipped's-fleet, where the Saxon first landed, would be 
as likely a place as any. Perhaps it was the centre of 
their encampment and defence, now that Vortimer had 
marked it out by a death-bed menace. According to 
Ethelward, in 465 "there was a great slaughter made 
on that day ; twelve chiefs of the Britons fell near a 
place called Wipped's-fleet ; there fell a soldier of the 
Saxons called Wipped !" There is, no doubt, a great 
difference between this dozen and the three hundred 
nobles or elders of Nennius. But the one may have 
had in view the commanders only ; the other, every 
minor chief also who had been invited to his death. 



■ THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 97 

In each account it falls into the same sequence of events, 
and the outcome also is the same. 

We can see it all even yet, — the Saxon embassy 
offering peace, with the good things of reconciliation ; 
the ready acceptance by a too convivial crew; the 
friendly crossing of the Wantsum to welcoming hands ; 
the long hall of Hengist, double-lined with revellers, 
— every second man trustful and careless, every man 
between with a dagger up his sleeve ; the sudden pre- 
concerted brawl ; the knife-cry of Hengist, — " Nimed 
eure sexa ;"tlie up-flashing and down-darting of the keen 
bronze or steel ; the shrieks, the groans, the struggling 
cries ; the. one or two mighty Britons who did not 
die breaking frantically from the shambles amid all 
the din ! Then the sudden rush on the leaderless 
British army ; its flight, horror-stricken, as from 
demons rather than men ! And so Kent, after thirteen 
years of battle, was lost by murderous treachery to the 
Briton forever. 

But even then Hengist could get no further. Pos- 
sibly, as Nennius relates, he may have extorted from 
Vortigern, his captive, a cession of Essex, Sussex, and 
Middlesex; but it was not recognized outside of the 
Saxon camp, and every rood of that territory must be 
fought for or left unwon. Even within Kent itself 
there were many islets of hostile area. One by one the 
inland cities would be brought back with a wrench to 

■E g 9 



98 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. " 

their subjection or fall before his vengeance, and after 
them the great Roman fortresses of the coast-line ; but 
this may have taken many years. Rutupise (Rich- 
borough) very likely outlasted him, as London cer- 
tainly did, although so near. 

Meanwhile, a formidable enemy was growing in the 
west. By a stroke of policy, Hengist freed Vortigern 
and sent him thither, to take off the first edge of the 
steel. It is a pity that we know so little of the second 
great champion on the British side. His name would 
seem to have been Ambrose (Welsh, Emrys), Latinized 
into Ambrosius, with the titular addition Aurelianus, 
or, as prefix, Aurelius. He may have been, as some 
say, heir to a princedom in Devon ; or, as Dr. Guest 
believed, a son of that ill-fated Caesar, Constans, who 
left a monastery for the grave. Legend favors the 
latter theory; so did the general opinion of former 
times. Gildas declares that his parents were adorned 
with the purple ; and this may have some weight, 
although approval of that hue was by no means ex- 
clusively imperial in his time. Nennius makes him 
claim descent from a Roman " consul," a term which 
would fit, when thus written, almost any potentate or 
official except the very lowest. Professor Rhys sug- 
gests that he may have been related to Nectarides, 
Count of the Saxon Shore, who was slain in the time 
of Theodosius. But this seems to be a groundless 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 99 

conjecture. The evident enthusiasm of the Roman 
party for him, with some coincidences of years and 
names, will incline our judgment, although doubtfully, 
towards the descent through the second Constantine. 
But, however it may be with regard to his birth, we 
cannot doubt that he had an imperial nature. 

Nennius — or more probably an interpolator of the 
tenth century — brings him before us in a wild romance 
of magic, oddly confused as to identity with his in- 
spired counsellor and bard. The tale would seem to 
have long floated in the popular mind before taking 
this written form. It is the first appearance of a theme 
very fertile in Welsh literature, — the prophecies of 
Merlin. It puts Ambrose before us — and no other 
British leader — with the title of emperor. The mirac- 
ulous part, half Christian, half druidical, may safely 
be set down to the great master of enchantment, — the 
wall supernaturally overthrown as often as reared; the 
ordained sacrifice of a son having no earthly father, 
his youthful wisdom confounding the elders ; the re- 
vealing of that fantastic underworld, where the two 
dragons of the isle maintain their age-long combat 
until the hour when the Cymry shall fully regain 
their own. Is this indeed more than a prose tran- 
scription of some poem by Merlin himself? It is not 
among those ascribed to him ; but there may have been 
many which no longer survive in metrical form. 



100 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

The passages referring to the age of the expounder 
would probably indicate the cause of the confusion of 
persons. The statement of territorial cession must 
mean a cession to Ambrose, and to him only. Vorti- 
gern thereby surrenders " that city and all the western 
provinces of Britain." 

This narrative hints at one of those odd Celtic trans- 
actions, wherein priestly art and the credulity of princes 
were given a political value. In part they represent 
the druidical power surviving or reviving in new trap- 
pings and under another name. Generations later, the 
same agency was at work in establishing the supremacy 
of Maelgwn. sThe present instance has the air of a 
trial of skill between Vortigern's half-pagan wise men 
and the Christian miracle-workers. The latter must 
have seen their best hope in the ascendency of Ambrose. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth romances differently. He 
brings the son of Constans over the channel, to avenge, 
for one thing, the murder of his father, which nobody 
then in Britain had committed. In "the plot of the 
long knives" Ambrose had no doubt a very adequate 
provocation ; but even of this the news came to him 
through a preternatural figure, — " Eldol, Duke of 
Gloucester," who shattered his way stake in hand out 
of the fatal banquet-hall over the dead bodies of sev- 
enty armed Saxons. We do not learn how he came by 
a title from Vortigern's own city. But he may stand 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. IQl 

for some real fugitive who brought the dreadful truth, 
as an eye-witness, to the Devonian legions of Ambrose. 

Their outcry of horror and execration has not ceased 
its echo even yet. We can form some idea of what it 
must have been. The men in whom the Britons con- 
fided — the fortress commanders, the daring mountain 
chiefs, the lieutenants on whom had fallen the mantle 
of their dead Vortimer — all by one damnable and 
heartless treason were laid low. Slain by the hands 
that offered friendship and food ! If the disaster 
really were less, rumor would magnify it. The crime 
it could not magnify. And their ruler Vortigern, the 
husband of the Saxon woman, bound by a double 
alliance, was seemingly consenting thereto. Suspected 
already, the mere sparing of his life might well be put 
in evidence against him. The north was probably 
once more in a life and death struggle against Octa; 
but all the western Britons may have come angrily 
surging towards London with the Eoman leader at their 
head. 

Vortigern can hardly have been in favor with any 
great portion of his people ; but there were those who 
adhered to him and went out to the fight. Some may 
have come, with the retainer feeling, from the province 
which he inherited. Some, benefiting by his court and 
patronage, were in dread of any change. A few may 
have loved him personally or hated the Roman faction 

9* 



102 '^^^ TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

worse than any invader. Out of the Saxon clutches 
and in extreme need of partisans, Vortigern could vie 
with any in wrathful abhorrence of the massacre ; he 
could repudiate his enforced concession ; he could de- 
clare for vengeance as soon as the domestic enemy 
should be out of the way. 

If we believe the triad, he went even further in con- 
ciliation. Then, or thereafter, seemingly by a partial 
abdication, he left the kingdom of London to his young 
son Gotta by Rowena (Alis Ronwen), " wherefore the 
kings of London are called sons of Alis." It is un- 
certain authority, but derives some support from the 
fact that we hear so little of London in the time of 
Ambrose and Arthur, and from the independent atti- 
tude of the city during the Saxon sway. According 
to Dr. Freeman, London, though acknowledging one 
sovereignty or another, " seems to have held her own as 
a distinct power ... a free imperial city, bearing rule, 
like Berne or Venice, over her Unterthaner, the still 
subject district of the Middle Saxons." 

By such or other means, and from these or other 
sources, an army was brought together and moved 
westward into the Gwent or open upland north of the 
Andred-wood. Probably Winchester, the great city 
of that region, was his first object. With or without 
battle, this was won ; and they marched onward over 
three-fourths of the way towards the strong post of 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 103 

Sorbiodanum. Ambrose and his men were there 
already in force, but came out to meet them at the 
"Wallop-fields. Then and there was fought "Cat- 
gualoph," the battle of Wallop, which broke the power 
of Vortigern so utterly that the word is a provincial 
synonyme for a thrashing to this day. 

Dr. Guest has fixed the locality. Nennius makes 
the time " twelve years from the reign of Vortigern," 
who may have been considered as superseded by Vor- 
timer after the defeat near Aylesford. This would 
bring us to 467, about two years after the massacre at 
Wipped's-fleet, a most unlikely interval. Other esti- 
mates prefer a.d. 463 for the accession of Ambrose; 
and he may have claimed the imperial purple then. 
But after this great victory, if not before, he became 
Embres Guledig to the Celtic Briton, Aurelius Ambro- 
sius to the Roman. Guitolin may have opposed his 
authority, or may have fought under him. This must 
remain obscure. There is no definite account of any 
opposition. He may have tolerated the son of Vorti- 
gern as a half-independent sub-king in what was even 
yet the metropolis, and the far northern armies may 
not even nominally have accepted his command. But 
he was the one man who might claim with show of 
reason to be the ruler of Britain. 

Vortigern vanishes in the mist of the Welsh moun- 
tains. The Nennius expanders give us a liberal choice 



104 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

of extravagances. Either he was worried from place 
to place by St. German us and all the British clergy, 
praying continuously forty days together for his sins, 
until fire from Heaven mercifully put a"ff"end to his tor- 
ment, or they merely shamed him out of all happiness 
in living, until, " deserted and a wanderer . . , broken- 
hearted, he made an ignominious end ;" or " the earth 
opened and swallowed him alive with all his belong- 
ings, not leaving even a trace." Geoffrey tries to work 
something plausible out of all this, declaring that Am- 
brosius and his brother set fire to the impregnable 
tower which was their enemy's asylum, thereby de- 
stroying him. But there is no reason to suppose 
that this has any better foundation. Perhaps the 
most likely conjecture is that it suited his purpose to 
hide away and raise a cloud of rumors to prevent all 
search. We find his son Pascent retaining control of 
his province Demetia, and later Gildas mentions it as 
governed by Vortipore, who was probably his grand- 
son. It is a fair inference that the fallen ruler spent 
his last years in the hills not far from Cair Gloui, very 
willing to be unseen and forgotten. In the words of 
Nennius, " enough has been said of Vortigern." 

Turn we now to the rising star, Ambrosius Aure- 
lianus. Geoffrey gives the following fancy sketch, 
guided, it may be, by hints which are lost to us now. 
The coloring is chivalric, of his own day, but the noble 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 105 

ideal is of all time. "Such," says he, "was the 
bravery and courage this prince was master of, that 
while he was in Gaul there was none that durst en- 
counter him. For in all encounters he either dis- 
mounted his adversary or broke his spear. Besides, he 
was magnificent in his presence, constant at his devo- 
tions, temperate in all respects, and, above all things, 
hated a lie. A brave soldier on foot, a better on horse- 
back, and expert in the discipline of an army." 

The much more modern estimate of Mr. Pearson is not 
very inconsistent therewith. We read that he was " a 
king of character and ability ;" that he was " evidently 
regarded as the champion of the national cause against 
the Saxon invader;" and that he "tried to oppose 
Roman discipline to the irregular fury of the Saxons. 
The very ' dragon of the great pendragonship' had been 
copied from a Roman ensign." 

The continental ecclesiastical writers, quoted at second 
hand in "Poste's Brittanica Antiqua," are at issue 
about the religious attitude of Ambrose, one account 
making him a restorer of the orthodox faith, another 
an Arian at heart and supporter of Hebrews and Mani- 
cheans, although admitting that he maintained peace 
and order in his dominions and showed himself zealous 
in reform. The seeming contradiction may imply only 
that he had the mental breadth to care little for minor 
distinctions of dogma ; that he was willing to live and 



106 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

let live in matters of religious belief, while fighting 
vehemently to maintain the rights of his people in this 
and every other regard. He was the standard-bearer 
of Christianity against heathendom, not of any narrow 
sect or the phraseology of any verbal creed. But the 
charge of indifference or hostility can hardly be made 
against the founder of the great choir of Amesbury, 
the chief monastery of Britain, "the wall of the 
Eternal." The title given him by his enemies, the one 
title which clung about his last battle-field and burial- 
place, was Natanleod, Prince of the Sanctuary. 

Mr. Whittaker, the eighteenth-century historian of 
Manchester, who mentions this identification, afterwards 
so admirably developed by Dr. Guest, also makes the 
campaigns of Ambrose against the Saxons begin at the 
north. A priori, there is probability in this. Octa in 
a new rush may well have been carrying all before 
him, while the southern British leaders were wasting 
their strength on each other. Perhaps it was then that 
the fortified site of Durham passed into Anglo-Saxon 
hands. Perhaps York was beset and Isurium and 
Blackrode were swept away. Then the vitals of the 
land were laid bare, and the isolated forts of the Kent 
shore must be abandoned to their own devices. As for 
London, it was probably in no grave danger, above all 
if held in name for a grandson of Hengist; and at 
worst Ambrose might properly aid cities which were 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 107 

loyal to him rather than those which were half hostile 
or standing alone. 

Whittaker says that he was defeated, but this is only 
a conjecture from winnings of the enemy which may 
have been made before. Blondes and Sigebert, quoted 
by Dr. Guest, aver that he led the Britons many times 
against the Saxons, and was at last defeated and slain ; 
that they fought under him with various success for 
forty-five years. Words like these do not indicate any 
very discouraging overthrow at the beginning. Prob- 
ably he and his army moved on the northern invaders 
with all the confidence which the rout of Vortigern 
could give, and struck them so hard and so often that 
they were glad to draw back. Geoffrey evidently had 
this idea. He narrates with impossible detail a great 
"victory from which Octa escaped to York. He exe- 
cutes poetical justice on Hengist himself by the hand 
of Eldol at the town of Kaerconan. He makes Octa 
surrender himself and the garrison of York to the 
mercy of the victor, while Ebissa implores permission 
to live and pay tribute. Nothing less than the entire 
reduction of the enemy will content him. We may 
smile over this contravention of history, but there is 
probably so much truth behind it as that Ambrose the 
Guledig fought manfully in Yorkshire and attained 
the general object of his efforts. Otherwise, the north- 
western assailants would without delay have burst over 



108 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

the backbone of the island into the tempting valleys of 
the Severn and the Dee. But these were to remain free 
and prosperous for another hundred years. 

From this great work the south before long must 
have been calling him wildly. The Saxons of the 
Caint were dangerously astir again. " Hengist with 
his son Aesc a second time make war against the Brit- 
ons," — perhaps for the rich pasture-lands of Eomney ; 
perhaps to exchange an uncertain influence over London 
for its actual occupancy. 

Dr. Guest and Mr. Green accept the former hypothe- 
sis, but for no convincing reason. And in every other 
endeavor the great Saxon leader seems to have aimed 
at the queenly city. "Wipped's-fleet can hardly be 
called an exception, for London, with all else at the 
southeast, might be expected to fall as the result. 

Mr. Pearson and others have called attention to the 
suspiciously artificial regularity of these and later 
doings, in the Chronicles. For half a century nearly 
everything takes place "after eight years," or after 
three, both being sacred intervals. But this may 
mean only that the very sacredness caused the choosing 
of such years for enterprises of moment ; or that those 
events were best remembered which could be made to 
fall into this kind of rhythm. 

The exciting cause of the new outbreak is hidden. 
Possibly the native advisers of the boy-king by the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 109 

Thames had proved less pliant than had been hoped by 
his rapacious kindred. Or his crown may have been 
a foot-ball by this time between revolutionary Romans 
and fiery Celts. Whoever was uppermost undoubtedly 
put together some power, very likely in part of the 
militia or train-band sort, for we hear of an " army" 
that was " slaughtered," and learn by the still earlier 
account how " the Britons fled from the Saxons like 
fire." Yet the latter, though " victors," are said to 
"remain on the field of battle," and there is an impli- 
cation of withdrawal even in the boastful words, " they 
carry o^ immense spoil." If we suppose that the city 
levies were routed, that the cattle of the Middlesex 
marshes were made booty, that the villas and villages 
were rifled as far as Southwark, but that in the end 
the trained legions of Ambrose came efiSciently to the 
rescue, we may not be very wide of the mark. This 
theory will harmonize with all the facts that we know. 
The outcome may have taken the form of a treaty be- 
tween the contending powers. We hear of no other 
attempt on London during four generations, while 
Hengist and his heirs remained secure in the possession 
of Kent. 

This cannot have been for a long time a very homo- 
geneous kingdom. Besides the mixture of Teuton and 
Scandinavian already referred to, there were tough 
indigestible bits of Britondom here and there, which 

10 



110 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

could not simply "draw back" after defeat, according 
to the programme of " the making of England," but 
would often be able to make good terms before surren- 
der. From inroad after inroad, many, no doubt, bad 
fled beyond the border, but some would accept servitude, 
to remain in their old homes, others would be allowed 
to live as they had lived before, and still others would 
come trooping in for work or trade when the wild 
forayers were known to have taken to farming. Prob- 
ably the woodlands and marshlands were never so 
densely peopled. There all were Celtic. Along the 
skirts of the forest Celt and Saxon must have inter- 
mingled ; along the Wantsum, the Scandinavian with 
the eminently composite Roman. Different surround- 
ings had their effect also. The Merscwara between the 
Rother and Lymne are pointed out as a distinct folk, 
though subsidiary; and for long there were under- 
kings of West Kent in the debatable lands beyond the 
Medway. 

Perhaps a seeming contradiction may be explained 
here, for Ethelward makes Aesc, the son of Hengist, 
begin to reign in Kent in 488, while Nennius declares 
that Octa, on the death of his father, " came from the 
sinistral part of the island to the kingdom of Kent, and 
from him have proceeded all the kings of that prov- 
ince." Aesc, as a younger brother, may have had but 
a subordinate half-realm. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN, m 

This is the last that we hear of Hengist. Indeed, 
there is no record of this pirate-monarch for fifteen 
years before. Mr. Green supposes him to have en- 
gaged in the wearisome task of reducing the great 
fortresses that dotted his coast. There is nothing un- 
likely in this ; yet, when their case was found to be 
hopeless, one would have expected a garrison here and 
there to be borne away by sea. Many ports were still 
in the hands of the Britons. If this were done, the 
fact has not been told. 

Among the many dark and puzzling questions of 
the fifth century, there is none more inscrutable than 
that of Britain on the sea. Carausius had a navy to 
resist the Saxons and Romans ; Alfred had a swift and 
efficient navy to drive off the Northmen. It is hard 
to believe that the second Constantine did not leave 
behind some vessels of war. It is harder to under- 
stand why Ambrose should have failed to supply this 
crying need from the merchant fleet of the Severn, or 
to have made ample purchase along the Gallic coast. 

There was no lack of shipping. When the army of 
Riothamus moved back and forth across the Channel, 
a multitude of sails and oars must have carried them. 
When the Bretons fled to Britain, and the Britons in 
turn fled to Brittany, they had other propulsion than 
their ^wn swimming. A Gallic youth, contemplating 
a course of saiutship, is made to turn quite naturally 



112 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

to British trading-vessels for means of transport. Al- 
most every bard or sage or visionary of the next hun- 
dred years is recorded as finding his way freely over 
the water. The Saxon had changed the landing- 
places of the island sails, but thus far can hardly have 
lessened their number. 

Yet they play no part in the great contest. Half 
the coast-line was beset, but we hear of no effort to 
raise the blockade. Expedition after expedition of 
the Saxons descended, without fear of interruption, 
unless from the militia of the land, A well-appointed 
British fleet might have cut off all succor from Thanet 
at a critical time, and thus have ended the war. Later, 
it might have linked Richborough with Eeculver, 
transferred the other scattered garrisons to the same 
quarter, and so built up a menace in the enemy's rear. 
Even a few ships would have scattered the little 
squadron of JElle, wherewith he began the ruin of 
Sussex. Not many would have been required to best 
Cerdic quite off the shore. At any stage of the con- 
flict a navy would have been a godsend to the Briton. 
Yet neither side has even a dim authentic reference 
to it as a fighting power, unless in the death-song of 
Corroi, the "Lord of the Southern Sea." But this 
title may have been no more than a bit of vaunting 
from the shore-line. Besides, Mr. Skene, demolishing 
Mr. Stephens, has found Corroi's adversary in a 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 113 

mythical Irishman of the Ossianic cycle, who died 
centuries on centuries before, if he ever lived at all. 
Corroi as an admiral has too many dates that will not 
come together, for sober history. 

What has been said of the shipping brings into 
light certain urban changes which must then have been 
going on. From the day when Hengist planted his 
outposts along the lower Thames and filled its estuary 
with his fleet, he held by the throat the maritime com- 
merce of London. Hardly could a vessel pass in or 
out unless by his permission, and his people were not 
yet at the stage of development where this would be 
given. London was a port no longer, and must live 
mainly by caravans. The main current of business 
and travel was diverted more and more to the south- 
western shore, and to what has been called the Severn 
Sea. Exeter, Bath, and Caerleon throve at the expense 
of London, as Chicago and St. Louis might thrive at 
the expense of New York in the case of a sea-line 
blockade. 

The overland travel to the southern coast was an- 
other factor, though a less one, in the shifting of wealth 
and population. There had always been something of 
the sort, answering to the later stage-coach lines, by 
way of Eichborough. This route probably moved 
westward to Dover and thence to Lymne, as the in- 
vaders came that way. When even these termini were 
h 10* 



114 TEE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

cut off, the main human stream flowed necessarily 
around the Andred-wood to Southampton Water and 
other indentations of the coast-line, adding to the pros- 
perity of Silchester and Winchester by the way. There 
was no doubt, in consequence, and for greater safety, a 
shifting of metropolitan population thus far westward ; 
while the harried districts of the northeast and the 
towns too often beleaguered may well have sent swarms 
of people into the protected and fertile Gwent. Com- 
merce would also find or force its way from Loudon 
more directly to the Channel through the mass of the 
forest. One such route must have led to the strongly- 
fortified seaport of Anderida, the capital of an im- 
portant mining region. Another has been traced north- 
eastward from Chichester. Where the first valley that 
it crosses came out of the woodland, a Roman villa- 
site furnishes evidences of even more than usual taste 
and luxury. Wealth, it may be, centred especially in 
this western end of the long fertile strip which the 
South Saxon before long made his own. Great cities 
were not far away. There was probably some con- 
spicuous temptation in that quarter, for the first attack 
was directed thither. 



CHAPTER yi. 

THE CONQUEST OF SUSSEX. 

I]sr 477, say the Chronicles, ^lle the Saxon, with 
his three sons, put out from Germany for Britain. 
Most likely they touched at Thanet or Dover, picking 
up some recruits and supplies by the way. Here, too, 
they would get hints for their guidance. Hugging the 
shore as they went westward, they landed at Keynor on 
the face of the Selsea peninsula, and mar6h^d inland 
towards Regnum. The local forces, hastily gathering, 
met them at or within the border of the mighty wood, 
and fought the battle of Aldredes (Andred) lea, which 
may have ended in the fall of the town. If not, its 
walled area surely must have been overcrowded with 
fugitives. For the Britons were defeated, and the 
neighboring lowlands thrown open to the marauders. 
The home of luxury at Bignor, and others like 
it, no doubt then also met their ruin, along the lower 
hills. 

Mr. Green supposes that the invaders became settlers 
forthwith, and made their way eastward by land, with 
the frantic haste of four miles to the year. But this, I 
'think, is another instance of the error by ship-ignoring. 

115 



116 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

They came in their long war-boats, and these, we may 
reasonably suppose, were kept for future use, the Saxon 
movements being, as yet, all near the sea. If they did 
not withdraw altogether with their plunder, it would be 
more natural to fortify and hold the neck of the penin- 
sula where they first made land, as Hengist, in the 
beginning, had fortified and held the one exposed face 
of Thanet. Perhaps, for a time, some treaty may have 
been entered into, which would secure -^lle there. But 
we may be sure that before this the strengthened vigi- 
lance of Ambrose would have been drawn to Sussex, 
and an army fit to cope with the Saxons would be in 
waiting for any advance. Henry of Huntington says 
that the next attack was opposed by the kings and 
rulers of Britain. Dr. Guest inferred from this the 
presence of the imperator. 

Eight years elapsed, the Saxon meanwhile making 
sure his foothold, most likely with reinforcements from 
Kent, which was quieter now, in the old age of Hen- 
gist, and with others from beyond the sea. A long 
line of prows, drawn well up on the sand, must have 
fringed the outer border of JEUe's little realm. With 
these at command, he awaited only a pretext or an op- 
portunity to slip by those who were watching him, — 
perhaps at night, — and fall on some other part of the 
shore, unguarded. He found, probably, the spot in the 
little estuary of Mercredsburn. At any rate, he fought 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 117 

a battle on or near that stream, and apparently with 
the main force of his opponents. It may be that they 
had been keen enough to watch his secrecy, and swift 
enough to outspeed him. A Saxon repulse must have 
followed, and a severe one ; for Ethelward does not 
claim it as a victory. Moreover, there was no further 
assault on the shore of Sussex for six years. 

Then it befell at the extreme eastern end, where 
Octa's Kent folk — he ruled there now — were un- 
doubtedly pressing. A great array of the Merscwara, 
as being nearest, very probably swelled the host of 
^lle before Anderida. 

That siege, with its wavering fortunes and its fero- 
cious ending, made some such impression on the peo- 
ples of the island as was made upon the Greeks and 
their neighbors by the tale of Troy. The Britons, 
like the Trojans, hurried from the sack and the ruin, 
with lamentations which have died. The Saxons, like 
the earlier victors, lifted up their voices in exultant 
song. Through Henry of Huntington, interpreted by 
Dr. Freeman, their chant has come down to our own 
day. The former turned into prose the crude historic 
balladry which lived on near the spot in the memory 
and recital of men ; the other has set it once more in 
the form of Saxon rhythm. 

The main, or at least the distinguishing, feature of 
the contest is the persistent efforts at relief by forces 



118 TEE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

out of the woodland. According to Mr. Green, these 
were miners of that district, hardy fellows, who, we 
may be sure, lent their aid. Yet by themselves 
they could not greatly trouble an army which was 
strong enough to attempt Anderida, one of the great 
military legacies of Rome. Nor would the British 
Guledig leave the very pearl of his border to its fate. 
We may fancy him pushing legion after legion, in 
threads of men, along the bridle-paths of Andred, 
where there was little by way of food ; sending his 
skirmishers to hover in a swarm about the Saxon in- 
trench ments; now dashing vehemently in force on some 
weak point which they had found for him ; now luring 
detached bodies into the thickets, where his men fell 
on them with slaughter. By some one all this was 
done ; why not by him ? 

But under such conditions he could not keep a suffi- 
cient army long in the field. Other frontiers may have 
needed his attention too. At times he must withdraw ; 
and the Saxons, following, were at last able to plant a 
covering force which he could not dislodge. After 
that, hardly a bird of the air could get into the city. 
In the end, famine or treachery or some sudden assault 
made it a prey. And there was not a shadow of mercy. 
Yet probably some women were spared, they being of 
the spoil. Ethelward and Dr. Freeman's ballad-maker 
deny even this. But the earlier statement, " there was 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 119 

not one Brit left/' hardly calls for more than the ex- 
termination of fighting men. 

So notable a victory would be followed, of course, by 
rapid progress westward along the shore.- All the rest- 
less adventurers in Kent would swell its volume. 
Northward, into the depths of the woods, they might 
work their way, setting fire to cabins and putting out 
furnaces, until checked on the dividing ridge by forces 
thrown out from London. But along the open land 
south of the woods there were more temptations, with 
less obstacles. Thither their retiring pioneers and their 
main body also would be drawn. At every small 
river-crossing they would be brought to a stand and a 
fight ; but it was a fight that must win. Regnum kept 
them back, it may be, for a time, until it was stricken 
out of existence, where a new town grew up afterwards, 
bearing its conqueror's name. But, by the end of the 
third year from the taking of Anderida, they were 
probably near Southampton water, and stoutly resisted 
by an army from the Gwent ; perhaps where the first 
valley beyond Chichester divides the narrow pass be- 
tween forest and sea. 

For now their aquatic flanking tactics began again, 
as when Reculver or Anderida had barred the way. 
Rightly to understand the conquest of Kent, Sussex, 
and Southern Wessex, we must conceive it as a con- 
tinuing whole, achieved largely by the same soldiery. 



120 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

or their oflfspring, and generally in the same way. 
What they could not pass by land, they invariably 
went around by water, ^d British fastnesses and garri- 
sons were often left for long in the rear of the con- 
quered territory. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE FALL OF AMBEOSE. 

This time the new ground was broken by Cerdic, a 
chief of the Gewissas, and with a more than usually 
ominous breaking. A great arm of the Channel aided 
him to reach the fertile inland. There was no Andred- 
wood for a barrier any more. When he grounded his 
prows by the mouth of the Itehin, he had seized the 
main artery of commercial England east of the Severn. 
Twenty miles of a broad Roman road would bring him 
easily to a great and wealthy city, little less than Lon- 
don in any regard. 

We may fancy the dismay of Winchester (Venta 
Belgarum) at this apparition, and of all her sister 
cities, with the country lying about them : the dashing 
off of mounted messengers, the hurrying forward of 
one levy after another as fast as arms could be put in 
their hands. Dislodge the invaders ; or, if not that, 
at least delay them, until we can gather forces for dis- 
lodgement ! surely must have been the cry. Hardly 
any other plan was open to a people thus situated and 
taken by surprise. Each detachment that came up 
was flung at once headlong on Cerdic and his men. 
F 11 121 



122 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

JFrom the hour of their landing until nightfall they 
were kept nimble in repulsing these ever-increasing, 
ever-assailing enemies. They made no way inland, 
counting it a victory that they were not driven from 
their hold. Every day must have made the task be- 
fore them more difficult. And surely the time cannot 
have been distant when Ambrose and his main army 
were to bar the way. 

Why that agency was not sooner brought to bear 
upon them will easily appear. In all the barbarian 
assaults there was a certain co-operation, extending 
over a wider area than we usually bear in mind. At 
the beginning, when the Pict and the Scot confederated 
with the Saxon, three frontiers of Britain were assailed 
together. Afterwards, when Hengist made for London, 
Octa broke through towards York. And we may sup- 
pose that Cerdic was supported in his great western 
venture by more or less active campaigning all along 
the very irregular border. 

The Kent people may have been threatening Lon- 
don from the Southwark side, or sailing and rowing 
across the Thames in detached parties to aid in the 
conquest of Essex. Other assailants — or possibly the 
same — may simultaneously have been struggling up 
from the sea-side along the Colne and the Chelm and 
the Stour, to occupy a fairer bit of country and assail 
Camulodunum. The north folk and south folk, avoid- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 123 

ing the two or three great forts by the coast, were at 
their slow work of winning the Gwent of the Iceni, 
valley by valley, plateau by plateau. Probably its 
capital had already fallen and passed away. Perhaps 
they were drawing perilously near the gates of Cam- 
bridge. 

Farther north, if we may believe Mr. Whittaker, 
were two independent and mighty inroads, — one by 
way of Durham and York, the other more to the west, 
ov^whelming all Lancashire, about 488, and halting 
finally before the wall of Chester. But this city did 
not fall; nor did Corineum, nor did Verulam. No 
invader reached, as yet, any part of the Thames valley 
from that quarter. None disturbed the repose of the 
Severn. It is likely they were met and beaten in de- 
tail much farther north, or wore themselves out in 
marching and fighting where reinforcements were not 
to be had. But so long as they were still in the field, 
the very life of the country depended on preventing 
their junction. Probably this severance had not 
been assured when Cerdic opened the new chapter of 
the war. Possibly not even in time to save Winchester, 
for Dr. Guest, following monkish legend, puts within 
one year the descent at Cerdic's ore and the capture of 
that city. But the authority is not good, and so rapid 
a sequence is at least unlikely. The Saxon may even 
have withdrawn altogether, as Mr. Green would seem 



124 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

to imply ; but in view of the importance of the position, 
we may be safer in a middle hypothesis. Where he 
had room, he would strengthen himself and stay. Re- 
inforcements would be sent for. Other descents would 
be incited. If there were no thoroughfare by land, at 
least the opportunity could not be better for reconnois- 
sance and worriment by sea. " Six years after their 
arrival they sailed around the western part of Britain, 
which is now called Wessex." 

This surely is the adventure of men operating from 
a settled base ; also of men who had by no means taken 
leave of the water-road. It is very significant in 
another way. By thus rounding Laud's End and sail- 
ing up the Bristol channel, how must Cerdic's eyes 
have been set aflame with the ancient and growing 
commerce of the Severn. He had learned the way to 
Caerleon, where later " the neighing of the wild white 
horse set every gilded parapet shuddering." And how 
his rushing kestrels of the sea must have fluttered the 
white dove-flocks all along the double Damnonian 
shore ! 

But the Saxon arms were not turned that way in 
earnest yet. In the very next year there was a descent 
again, but near their main body, indeed much nearer 
than even the new conquest beside the Itchin. In the 
lapse of time the entry took a legendary shape, con- 
fusing a real conflict with fanciful word-explaining. 



TEE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 125 

The mythical Port figures in it, with damage to the 
faith of Mr. Pearson, who thereupon calls the whole 
record unhistorical. Under the same verbal spell, 
Sharon Turner long ago identified this episode with the 
death-battle of Geraint. Cries Llywarch, the man of 
eld, " Before Geraint, the enemy of oppression, I saw 
white horses jaded and gory, and after the shout a ter- 
rible resistance. 

"In Llongborth I saw the weapons of men and 
blood fast dropping. . . . 

" In Llongborth I saw Arthur, emperor and con- 
ductor of the toil." 

But the fight at Portsmouth was before the day of 
Arthur's empire, though not long ; and these historic 
legendary fancies may all drift away together. Yet 
no doubt there was a landing vi et armis, — a landing 
just where the Chronicle puts it, for that was in the 
logical necessity of the case. The great Port, as even 
the Latins called it, was in no need of any man's per- 
sonality. It offered the one outlet between the South 
Saxons and the West Saxons for the commerce of the 
Gwent by sea. It formed the hard nucleus of the 
griping resistance which held by the throat the long- 
hungry column of the sons of ^lle. Smitten front 
and rear, it fell. The rush poured over it and by it 
into a broader country. The hand-clasp of Saxon and 
Saxon was given in a camp of Cerdic. Therewith 

11* 



126 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

y ended the opening year (or the second) of the blind 
sixth century. 

It was not an auspicious beginning for the Britons ; 
yet the situation was not all against them. The fight 
had been going on, with little or no interruption, for 
more than fifty years, and still at the worst there was 
but one breach in the second line of defences. The 
sea-coast was all gone from the Humber to the Isle of 
Wight, except for a great fortress here and there living 
a life of its own ; but the frame- work of woodland had 
taken its place, and hardy men filled and lined that 
natural barrier. In every gap stood some walled gar- 
rison-town, with Roman forethought in the lines and 
weight of its masonry. 

London, greatest of all, held the very apex of a great 
V of wilderness, where the Thames broke through east- 
ward, and her invincibility had all but turned the 
Cantwara into quiet, civilized men. Due north and 
due west from points not far away, the great wings of 
the forest ridges ran very nearly to the Trent and 
Itchin : that on the south a broad waste of timber and 
thicketry, ill-explored, haunted by every kind of brute 
savagery, bearing for its very name the absence of all 
ordered human life ; the other, a degree less impassable 
by nature, but made equally strong by the greater num- 
ber of its defenders. The Ermine street, one of the 
most vital roads of the island, ran a little behind the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 127 

crest. Others opened into or from it, or made their 
crossing. Men went and came in numbers, and towns 
had grown up of that passage. Here and there a large 
city like Verulam filled a clearing in the forest. And 
in those days of menace, earthworks and block-houses 
must have been freely strung along wherever there 
was more than usual apprehension. 

Towards York the line had indeed repeatedly given 
way, and, although intermittently re-established, it was 
now probably well back to Sherwood forest, the Peak, 
and the desert, following thence the backbone of the 
island as far as the southern wall, where the grandsons 
of Cunedda and the unc(mquerable men of Caerluel 
were perhaps keeping up half independently a warfare 
of their own. Even north of this, two-thirds of the 
country were yet in British hands, if Mr. Skene's 
maps be fair criteria of it in later times ; but here, the 
temptation being less, the attack was no doubt light 
also. From so remote a quarter no enemy could gain 
access to the heart of the land. 

But there had long been danger from Lindsey by 
way of Lindom and Leicester, from York by way of 
Chester ; and it was very great and urgent now along 
the quite open frontier to the north of Southampton 
water. Only a thin screen of bushy woodlands here, 
a low crest-line, with valleys breaking through. Be- 
fore long even these were passed, and the invaders 



128 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

entered on the fair and fertile upland which had been 
the chief heritage of the Belgae. 

May we suppose that the great British Guledig had 
foreseen this and taken his measures accordingly? 
There was but one adequate way of defending the in- 
defensible, and that way he had chosen. All material 
bulwarks failing, he would and did erect a rampart of 
zeal. Where the Saxon saw only a fertile and inviting 
Jand, unwalled, thrown open to the air, his for all ravage 
and plunder, he came to feel the presence of a fighting 
holy of holies. The rich Gwent was there, agricultural, 
pastoral, astir with the overland commerce of a half- 
score of cities ; but there, also, was the great sanctuary 
of Britain, the monastery imperial, the choir of the 
dominion, which Ambrose himself had founded, and of 
which he was proud to be the titular head. The monks 
of Amesbury must have been worth another army. 

But armies of the ordinary sort were gathering. 
The three-mile circle of Calleva was held in such force 
that no eastward movement of the invaders took place 
for many years. The sheer cliffs of Old Sarum hardly 
needed a garrison. From the territory of the Four 
Towns, from the valley of the Severn, from the west- 
ward trend of Dynaint, perhaps from the mountains 
and the far northern cities, recruits may have been 
steadily pouring into the great camp of Ambrose, by 
the border of Salisbury Plain. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 129 

But in the years of watching and waiting, the crucial 
strain upon the Celt was the strain of holding together. 
There was nothing less than life and death in it now, 
and the desperate ingenuity of an aged man must have 
been sorely put to it for means to stay the melting. 
More than ever he would strive to give them some- 
thing of the permanent coherence, as well as the form, 
of the old legions. More than ever he would stimu- 
late the esprit du corps of his own equestrian body- 
guard, itself a legacy of Rome, but now changing to 
a more individual array, — princely men of sword 
and spear, where each was a younger comrade of his 
imperial lord and held worthy to lead men into battle. 

Even the sports of Eome, in a nobler development, 
were made the means of tempting the uneasy to remain 
and the more distant soldiery to draw near, while all 
were hardened for the rough work ahead. Whatever 
the embellishment of Norman days, we may find a 
reasonable independent explanation of the fantastic 
chivalry, the wealth of adventure, the incessant mimic 
battling, which distinguish in poetry and legend this 
lost life of Britain while still free. The Saxon had 
never anything half so winning. 

But the Saxon was set in mind on scattering it 
utterly, and making what it guarded his own. Cerdic 
felt the gathering before him, and drew, in his turn, on 
the long warlike fringe of settlement as far east as 



130 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Pevensey, and even from what may be called the home 
land of the Caiut. Wherever a Saxon was, there, too, 
was aid for the daring founder of Wessex. Yet seven 
years elapsed before he felt strong enough to make a 
great forward movement. 

Guided by nomenclature, legend, and later record, 
we may suppose that the British irregular forces occu- 
pied the forests of Charwood and Waltham Chase 
in the new region which the Saxons had won ; while 
the main army, under Ambrose in person, was drawn 
up either south of Winchester or more probably south- 
east of Amesbury. In spite of his eighty years, the 
fiery imperator is said to have begun the battle with a 
great onslaught, which was fatally successful, for it 
removed him and one whole wing of the British array 
beyond hope of aid. Matters went ill behind him be- 
fore he turned, and then there were enemies both in 
front and rear. The fight lasted long, even against 
such odds, but in the end he had five thousand of his 
fighting men to bear him company, and Stonehenge for 
their monument. 

Yet the host of Cei'dic must have been shattered in 
shattering, and most likely withdrew towards Winches- 
ter, which may have yielded in a panic, following the 
evil news. It can hardly have been taken sword in 
hand, for one of the more notable churches became a 
heathen temple, and the city continued in human occu- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 13X 

pancy, instead of being reduced to ruin and ashes. 
Beyond this and a crescent of the fertile land about it, 
the Saxon gained little. Probably Owain, who may 
have been Uthyr the Terrible, showed too savage a front 
for further molestation. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AETHUE — WHO AND WHEEE ? 

OwAiN and Uthyr are names which fill the gap, 
real or assumed, between Ambrose and Arthur. Dr. 
Guest believes in the former as the son and the heir of 
the great Aurelius ; but Uthyr is to him only a per- 
sonified verbal error. Geoffrey, he supposes, mistook 
" Arthur Mabuter" for " Arthur, son of liter," 
whereas it should be translated the " terrible child," — 
a fit characterization of precocious valor. And having 
discovered a parent for Arthur, he was bound to invent 
the parental biography or leave his history incomplete. 

If this be true, Taliessin and his contemporaries 
must have blundered in the same way. They refer 
unmistakably " to the son of Uthyr" in one poem, 
and to the "servant of Uthir" in another; while a 
third, from beginning to end, is " the Death-Song of 
Uthyr." I am not quite sure how these would stand 
in the final revision of Mr. Stephens, which was never 
completed, but they all seem to be accepted as authentic 
by Mr. Skene, a still greater authority. 

To Geoffrey, if he believed what he tells us, the 
matter presented itself quite clearly ; and Malory fol- 
132 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. I33 

lowed his version. Uther was the younger brother of 
Ambrose ; Arthur was the son of Uther by miraculous 
personation. We all know the story, not without older 
parallels, but it is unbelievable now. 

Mr. Pearson has another solution. Uther was Am- 
brosius himself. Arthur was the son of both, or 
either, as you will, and succeeded to a "diminished 
sovereignty," with his capital in the " Roman works" 
of Camelot. 

But Gildas, who was almost a contemporary and 
given over to adoration of Ambrosius, never seems to 
have heard of any Uther, identical or otherwise. Nen- 
nius, coming after, is equally silent. Owain fares no 
better at their hands. What we learn of either before 
Geoffrey, must be through Welsh pedigrees or Cum- 
brian poetry. The former do not claim to be inspired. 
The inspiration of the latter is uncertain. In this un- 
certainty, at least, we may follow them, with the one 
suggestion of identity thrown out already. 

And now of Arthur. Whence was he ? What did 
he? Wherein consisted the real historic outline and 
body o£-.the greatest imaginative development which 
the world has ever seen ? The Welsh of the Middle 
Ages believed him to be Cornish beyond question, with 
his chief seat in the beginning at Celliwig, where the 
remains of "Arthur's castle" are still found. Later, we 
find him designated as hereditary king of the Siluresj 

12 



134 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

or as probably the nephew of a southwestern princelet ; 
or as the son of Merig, a chief in Glamorgan. Brit- 
tany has always claimed him for her own. Turning 
far northward, tradition is loud of him all about 
Carlisle ; and Scotch thoughtfulness and thoroughness, 
in almost unexampled array, have been exerted in 
proving, as nearly as they can be proven, the claims 
of the region which afterwards became Strathclyde. 

Perhaps it is well that there should be this perma- 
nent diversity. Perhaps there was a subtle discern- 
ment in the more poetic myth-tale of his career, which 
wrapped it in g^lamour from the mist of Tintagil to the 
mystery of Avalon. And yet we cannot but long to 
know more. 

"Whether he came from the northwest or the south- 
west, he soon took rank as a great leader of men, and 
this must have been for one or two reasons. Either he 
inherited supremacy, or it was given to him by choice 
for what was in him and what he had done. These 
have ever been the ways of attaining such success. 

Nennius is the first who throws any light exactly on 
this point. He says that Arthur was chosen to com- 
mand; chosen twelve times for merit of his own; 
chosen in preference to many others of more exalted 
birth. " Then it was that the magnanimous Arthur, 
with all the kings and military force of Britain, fought 
against the Saxons. And though there were many 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. I35 

more noble than himself, yet he was twelve times 
chosen their commander, and was as often conqueror." 

Now, assuredly such language could not be applied 
to the son or the nephew of Ambrosius Aurelianus. 
In all the island, who were " more noble" than these ? 
The witness of Gildas, though vague enough, is of sim- 
ilar purport. He berates the descendants of the great 
Roman champion for degeneracy; he fixes his own 
birth-year by the crowning victory of Mount Badon ; 
but he does not in any way bring together the two lines 
of thought. The explanation is not far to seek. If 
Arthur had been really akin to Ambrose, how exult- 
antly would his praises have been sounded ! If Ar- 
thur were distinctively a Briton, how obstinately the 
embittered monkish partisan might set his lips against 
the least utterance of that name ! 

In rebuking one of the minor sovereigns, who strove 
to retain something of Arthurian prestige after the 
breaking up of the Arthurian empire, he makes use of 
language hitherto overlooked, which indicates that he 
was well aware of more than he would say. " And 
thou, too, Cuneglasse," he cries, " thou bear, thou rider 
and ruler of many, thou guider of the chariot which 
is the receptacle of the bear." Now, " the bear" is a 
translation of "Arth," and what can the chariot be but 
great " Arthur's wain," wheeling, even as now, in the 
heavens ? Stated in full, it might be, " And thou, too, 



136 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Cuneglasse, thou would-be Arthur, thou rider and 
ruler of many, thou that assumest the state and imperial 
progress of the mighty departed, why art thou fallen 
into the filth of thy former naughtiness?" Yet not 
even to point a moral can he bring himself to mention, 
out of the Latin, that Celt of hardly decipherable 
origin, whose genius had stayed the Saxon flood and 
made Britain illustrious. 

We turn to the testimony of the bards. They were 
pre-eminently the wake-singers, the celebrators of the 
far-descended dead, the feast-singers who exalted the 
living in their pedigree. But, with one doubtful ex- 
ception, already noted, they tell us nothing whatever of 
Arthur's ancestry. In Llywarch, least professional, 
most indisputably antique, most noble and touching 
and soldierly of them all, the prowess of the Guledig 
appears, with little more. "Arthur and brave men 
who hewed down," he sings in one place ; " Arthur did 
not retreat" (according to Mr. Stephens's revision), in 
another. 

Taliessin, more courtly, more pictorial, but far less 
vehemently in earnest, brings before us the external 
splendor, the adventurousness, the human-kindly attri- 
butes of the hero. "Arthur distributed gifts," — 
" Arthur of anxious memory." " When we went with 
Arthur, a splendid labor." "His swift irruptions 
and his red purple, and his assault over the wall." 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 137 

"Arthur and the fair Cai . . . before the chiefs of 
Emrais I saw Cai." 

Later from various bards we hear of " the steed of 
Arthur," " the prowess of Arthur," " a mystery to the 
world, the grave of Arthur." He is cited by Aneurin 
as the accepted standard of heroism, the test, the unsur- 
passable ideal. In all this, hardly one word consistent 
with a glorious lineage ; not one inconsistent with a 
most glorious life. In the triads, too (those that are 
really ancient), and the older elements of the tales 
everything seems to point the same way. He may 
have been frowned upon in certain quarters for being a 
brilliant upstart ; but they left to later generations the 
depreciation of his merit by a royal family tree. For 
in truth he won the purple, and defended it as he de- 
fended the land and the faith. 

But these allusions prove and disprove much more. 
He cannot have been, unless at the very first, "the 
petty prince of a Devonian principality." He must 
have been more than the provincial hero of the Scotch 
lowlands. If he were ever in Armorica, he went 
there. If he held his most brilliant court at Caerleon, 
it may have been because Wales, too, had a seaboard 
needing his presence and watchful eye. The frequent 
recurrence of his name in so many parts of Britain — 
hundreds of places bear or have borne it — may surely 
be taken as some evidence that his coming and going 

12* 



138 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

were once everywhere matters of expectancy and mo- 
ment. The Britons award him, in legend, a super- 
human celerity of movement, favoring this view. 

But there is more positive and explicit testimony. 
In the Red Book of Hergest are the " Triads of Ar- 
thur and his Warriors," which, according to Mr. Skene, 
do not lie under suspicion. They begin thus : Three 
tribe thrones of the island of Prydain (Britain). Ar- 
thur, the chief lord at Menevia, and David, the chief 
bishop, and Maelgwn Gwynedd, the chief elder. Ar- 
thur, the chief lord at Kelliwig in Cornwall, and Bishop 
Betwini, the chief bishop, and Caradawg Vriechvras, 
the chief elder. Arthur, the chief lord at Penrionyd 
in the north, and Cyndeyrn Garth wys, the chief bishop, 
and Gurthmwl Guledig, the chief elder." Here we 
have a well-developed organization of provinces, with 
a lieutenant or viceroy over each and a spiritual in- 
spirer to keep the zeal of the fighting-men astir. 

Yet as to such matters there is a mighty bias in the 
place of birth. How inevitably the gravest Briton 
appropriates his Arthur, even if originally repudiating 
the former name ! By no means shall any other corner 
of the island be allowed an equal right. Professor 
Freeman, for one, admits the leaning very candidly, 
and his northern opponents may as well do the same. 
May an Anglo-American — absent a quarter of a mil- 
lennium from the old home — be allowed to give a 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 139 

casting vote? It would certainly accord with the gen- 
eral understanding of English-speaking and Welsh- 
speaking people, and the plain historic statement of 
Nennius. Local tradition has its value, and a great 
value ; but we cannot ignore the general tradition of 
a race. Arthur was imperator of Britain. 

We need not suppose any sudden bound from the 
shadow into sovereignty. Mr. Whittaker asserts that 
his first northern victories were won as the lieutenant 
of Ambrose, though commanding an army. This 
granted, there is nothing to surprise us in his further 
advancement. Yet there may well have been great 
towns and great people who did not take kindly to 
the rule of a new man from the west. A legend of 
London seems to hint at some such unwillingness. 

There is also an old poem — a metrical dialogue trans- 
lated by Mr. Stephens — in which Guinevere is made to 
banter her suitor with his obscurity. She affects in the 
beginning not to know him at all. She doubts his 
prowess, with a gently-smiling face. She ridicules his 
steed and taunts him into boasting. At last she relents 
a little and graciously admits having seen him some- 
where once upon a time, — yes, at Celliwig, — "a man of 
moderate stature dispensing wine to his friends." 

In another, imperfectly preserved by the Black Book 
of Caermarthen, she summarily denies him admittance 
to her home, although accompanied by "the blessed 



140 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Cai." The sportive lady even insinuates by a play on 
words that the blessing is of the wine-cellar, and that 
her visitors are more merry than safe. Such were the 
trials of the youthful Arthur when he would a-wooing 
go. Or rather such were the trials that seemed proba- 
ble to those who lived we know not just how long 
after. 

Yet, in this love-making, instinct may have aided 
wisdom to build up his power. Geoffrey makes him 
choose his bride from "a noble Roman family" and 
from the household of " Duke Cador, of Cornwall," — 
undoubtedly Caradoc Vriechvras. An alliance like 
this would all but obliterate the two chief dangers of 
his position, — the jealousy of the Roman party and the 
resentment of the slighted. 

But he went much farther in making amends to that 
prince " of the brawny arm." The holy city of Ames- 
bury became Caer Caradoc, where every Saxon inroad 
found the blood of Ambrose in the post of honor. 
He was accorded, as we have seen, a kind of under- ' 
kingship in the whole southwest. In the only verses 
attributed to Arthur, Caradoc Vriechvras is named as 
one of the three "battle knights" of Britain. And 
when the great imperator lay dying at Glastenbury 
after Camlan, he passed the sovereignty, we are told, to 
Constantine, the son or brother of Caradoc. 

There could be nothing of selfish planning in such a 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 141 

transfer at such a time. Nor are we justified in sup- 
posing that there had been before. The profoundest 
policy is the instinct of the noblest minds. Generosity, 
faith, and enthusiasm work in line with other great 
forces of the universe. As he was situated, this be- 
came emphatically true. All his zeal for religion, all 
his love of country, all his personal affection, all that 
went to make him " the magnanimous Arthur," must 
find expression in aiding his great designs. If he 
showed astuteness in matters of detail, it was the bet- 
ter for all. 

He was the darling of the Celt from the beginning. 
Later, the Roman came to him and the young queen. 
The "loricated legions" had been won early by the 
hard fighting they had seen him do. The most zealous 
churchman could ask nothing better than a monarch 
who was so pre-eminently a champion of the cross, who 
set the bishop everywhere side by side with the local 
king, and went vehemently into battle with the Queen 
of Heaven painted upon his shield. It needed only 
victory for every faction to make him its hero above 
all. And victory he gave them in abundance. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE WAES OF AETHUE — IN THEOEY. 

Says Nennius, " The first battle in which he was 
engaged was at the mouth of the river Gleni (Vatican 
MS. Glein). The second, third, fourth, and fifth were 
on another river, by the Britons called Duglas, in the 
region Linius. The ^ixth on the river Bassas. The 
seventh in the wood Celidon, which the Britons call 
Cat Coit Celidon. The eighth was near Gurnion 
castle, where Arthur bore the image of the holy Virgin, 
mother of God, upon his shoulders, and, through the 
power of our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy Mary, 
put the Saxons to flight and pursued them the whole 
day with great slaughter. The ninth was at the city 
of Legion, which is called Cair Lion. The tenth was 
on the banks of the river Trat Treuroit. The eleventh 
was on the mountain Breguoin, which we call Cat 
BregioD. The twelfth was a most severe contest, when 
Arthur penetrated to the hill of Badon. In the engage- 
ment nine hundred and forty fell by his hand alone, 
no one but the Lord affording him assistance. In all 
these engagements the Britons were successful, for no 
strength can avail against the will of the Almighty." 
142 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 143 

This list obviously is not complete. The twenty 
years after Mount Badon can hardly have been years 
of inactivity. The nine hundred victims are nearly as 
credible as an uninterrupted career of success over such 
enemies and in so long a reign. Besides, he positively 
did not drive out the Saxons. They outlasted him, 
and in the end appropriated all the lowlands of Brit- 
ain. We turn to them for the other side of the story. 

Th^ have nothing whatever to say for six years 
after the death of Natan Leod. Then (514) "Stuf 
and Wihtgar land in Cerdic's Ore and suddenly make 
war on the Britons, whom they put to flight and them- 
selves remain masters of the field." This has the look 
of a forcible reopening of communication with Cerdic, 
who may have been for a time cut off from the shore 
by a force approaching laterally through Waltham 
Chase. 

"Five years after (519) Cerdic and Cynric fought a 
battle against the Britons at Cerdic's ford, on the river 
Avene, and that same year nominally began to reign." 
This was no doubt near Charford, on the Hampshire 
Avon. It may have been in defence of the left flank 
and rear. Or they may have been detected in an at- 
tempt to enter by surprise the British territory through 
the forest of Char wood. 

" Eight years after, they renew the war against the 
Britons." 



144 TEE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

No particulars are given. There are no other entries 
of operations on the mainland for more than forty 
years. Thus, omitting the Isle of Wight, we have, 
duriflg the Arthurian period, the mention of but two 
battles, both at the south, and only one of these is 
insisted on as a Saxon victory. 

Llywarch Hen, with a very soldierly frankness, ad- 
mits a defeat at Llongborth. "-Before they were over- 
come they committed slaughter." But we do not know 
with any certainty when or where the battle of Llong- 
borth was. The name would fit any haven of ship- 
ping, according to one translation; any long port, ac- 
cording to another. Certain villages bear it still ; but 
such coincidences are often misleading, especially where 
the nomenclature is common and descriptive. Lang- 
port in Hampshire has thus been suggested. So has 
the Charford battle. Mr. Pearson favors Dartmouth. 
The guess of Mr. Sharon Turner (Portsmouth) has 
already been given. But Geraint was slain at Llong- 
borth, and one of the earlier of the Welsh tales, which 
are called Mabinogion, represents him as living until 
Arthur habitually held court at Caerleon. This is 
likely to have been after the Mount Badon encounter, 
the date of which is placed by Dr. Guest at 520, by 
most others at 516. As the mention of Geraint's death- 
fight is so isolated, we can never hope to know much 
more about it. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 145 

Later writers add a few details, more or less reliable, 
from the common traditional memory and opinion of 
their time. Thus, Higden, quoted by Dr. Guest : 
"Men read in some chronicles that Cerdicus fought 
oft with Arthur, and if he were overcome he rose up 
oft stronger to fight, and at last, after six and twenty 
years from Cerdicus's coming, Arthur was weary and 
noyful of him, and gave him Hampshire and Somerset 
and called that country Wessex. And he made faith 
and swore to him." This would end the war at the 
south naturally, soon after the great battle of Bath Hill. 
Rudbourne, we are told, also mentions this treaty. 
Gildas does not, but plainly regards that victory as 
opening an era of comparative quiet and well-being. 
It has been commonly called the Peace of Mount 
Badon. 

Here we find Cerdic put forward for the chief an- 
tagonist of Arthur, as might be expected. In the 
country between the two northern walls that role is 
given to Ossa Cyllelaur, most likely a descendant of 
the great Ebissa, who probably took command after 
Octa became king of Kent. Geoffrey of Monmouth 
makes Arthur hurry from Bath to Alcluyd, then under 
menace, and fight a series of battles with Scots and 
Picts and Saxons in the vicinity of Lake Lomond, the 
reconquest of all Valentia being the final result. Mr. 
Stuart-Glennie and Mr. Skene have fully shown that 
ok 13 



146 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

the orally-transmitted history of the region goes far to 
bear out even this claim. Edinburgh and Dumbarton 
are alike "Arthurian l(fcalities;" and the same is true 
of many an intervening river-side and stronghold. 

But the list of Nennius will ever be, as it has been, 
the chief text of explainers. There is no reason to 
doubt its general accuracy. The facts were very con- 
spicuous. They were put on paper within a century 
and a half or thereabout after the death of Arthur. 
It is natural to suppose that they had been preserved 
in the same way, as well as orally, through the inter- 
vening period. They are alluded to briefly, as we 
might speak of Lutzen or Prestonpans, or the storming 
of Quebec. 

But what was very plain in the minds of men twelve 
centuries ago has become a deplorable entanglement. 
You turn to the map of England, and the names are 
duplicated, and more than duplicated, in the most 
diverse quarters ; or they are confusingly approximated ; 
or they are gone. Moreover, the annotations and inter- 
pretations of the MSS., by early and unknown hands, 
vary in the several copies. Nor are men agreed as to 
the requirements of the situation, the relative position 
and strength of the contending parties, or the probable 
sequence of events. 

Dr. Guest supposes that the Cat Coit Celidon and 
the battle at the mouth of the river Gleni were in the 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 147 

neighborhood of the Cherwell valley, not very far from 
the famous White Horse of the south. He gives no 
reason, beyond the fact that it was a convenient west- 
ward road for the Saxons to take. He thinks it was 
a favorite with them. But others have found the 
Gleni in Lincolnshire, in Northumberland, and well 
over the Scotch border; while Celidon (meaning merely 
a wood) is equally identified with the forest of Selkirk 
and with the wilderness between Penrith and Carlisle. 
The eighth battle, we are told, was either in Cornwall 
or Durham, or Norfolk, or the far northern Dale of 
Woe insisted on by Mr. Skene. An ancient marginal 
note of one version of Nennius identifies the mountain 
Breguoin with Cadbury Hill in Somerset ; but Messrs. 
Skene and Stuart-Glennie put it nearly at the other 
end of the island. Trath Traroit is the mouth of the 
Kibble (near Liverpool), or the arms of the Brue around 
Glastenbury, or the sands by "Castle Dangerous." 
Caerleon becomes at will Exeter, or Chester, or " some 
town at the north," probably Alcluyd. As for Bath 
Hill, it seems to be found almost everywhere except 
where in reason it ought to be. After this manner is 
confusion scientifically confounded. 

The contestants turn for ammunition to the writers 
of older time ; but they turn not always wisely, and 
the result now and then sets humor astir. Thus Mr. 
Stuart-Glennie, in the heat of his advocacy of Boudon 



148 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Hill, gravely calls Layamon into court to witness that 
" the Avon" flowed by Mount Baclon. Surely, — and 
there is a Devonshire Avon, a Hampshire Avon, an 
Avon which sees Bath and probably " Bath Hill " re- 
flected in its tide. Is it not possible that Layamon 
had in mind some other stream than the all-but- 
unknown Avon which empties into the Firth of 
Forth? 

So far as I know, the earliest attempt at a consecu- 
tive explanatory account of those campaigns will be 
found in Geoffrey of Monmouth. He ignores the 
first battle altogether, perhaps finding it unmanageable, 
and begins apparently with the second. The Saxons, 
according to him, held the northeast, having " subdued 
all that part of the island which extends from the 
Humber to the sea of Cathness." Arthur was " then 
fifteen years old, but a youth of such unparalleled 
courage and generosity joined with that sweetness of 
temper and innate goodness as gained him universal 
love." He took the aggressive, marching from Caer- 
leon, against York. The Saxon leader came forth to 
meet him. They encountered by the Duglas. The 
Saxons were defeated, pursued to York, and besieged 
there. A relieving force was waylaid by a detach- 
ment under Duke Cador and put to flight. A very 
much stronger Saxon army came up from the coast, 
and Arthur reluctantly withdrew to, London. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 149 

There he was strengthened by reinforcements from 
Brittany, and took the field again. Lincoln (Caer- 
ludcoit) was then closely besieged by the enemy. He 
fell upon them with great slaughter. They retreated 
to the " wood of Celidon," where they made a stand. 
He felled the trees all around them, and began a regu- 
lar leaguer. They endured this for three days, and 
then, "ready to starve," surrendered. He allowed 
them to leave the island on parole. This they broke, 
and, sailing around to the coast of Devonshire, landed 
at Totness. Before he could return from the north, 
great devastation was done as far as the walls of Bath. 
He found them there, drove them to a neighboring 
"mountain," and stormed it after a great slaughter. 
This was the ruin of the Saxons, the very last of 
them being slain or taken by Caradoc in pursuit. 

This narrative is obviously incomplete. Why, with 
Nennius before him, has Geoffrey nothing to say of 
the other battles ? There would be no great difficulty 
in conjuring up some tale for each and all. It reads 
as though he were merely elucidating the most con- 
spicuous items of popular memory. But, at any 
rate his account has a value as showing the common 
British opinion of 1147. Its Duglas was in Lan- 
cashire ; its " forest of Celidon" was within marching 
distance of Lincoln ; its Bath Hill was the hill by 
Caer-badus, the Aquse Solis of Rome. Its Arthur 

13* 



150 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

conquered first at the north, afterwards at the south, 
later still in the lowlands of Scotland. 

In the eighteenth century a more elaborate attempt 
was made by Whittaker, the Manchester historian, to 
whom Dr. Guest was afterward, indebted for much 
that is distinctive in matter and method. Thus, each 
of them identifies Mount Badon with Badbury Hill, 
shifting the victory to the border of Wessex. Also, 
they agree in the identification of Ambrosius with 
Natan-Leod. Whittaker also set the example of 
pedestrian investigation, studying topography and 
tradition on the spot. With some obvious errors and 
many misleadings of fancy, he has the merit of being 
nearer the truth as a whole than any other inquirer. 

He believed that Arthur first encountered the 
Saxons in the valley of the Dee, under the beleaguered 
walls of Chester (Caer Ligion), the ninth battle 
being out of its true place in the list. They were 
driven beyond the Mersey, he supposes, but rallied on 
the next line of defence, where its tributary, the 
Duglas, comes down from the hills of the northwest. 
" Linuis," the region of the lake, is explained by the 
presence of a great mere, then the most conspicuous 
feature of South Lancashire, but now drained away. 
What we call " the Lake Country" was not so very 
distant. 

The defeated army awaited Arthur amid the ruins, 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 151 

it may be within the Roman walls, of the capitol of 
the Sistuntii, which they or some earlier invasion had 
wasted utterly. The site was afterward, occupied by 
the village of Blackrode. We have no details of the 
conflict ; " the Duglas ran red all the way to Wigan." 
So said local tradition more than twelve hundred years 
afterwards. In the end the Saxons gave way, following 
the stream downward through the woods and the 
night. 

Arthur, following, brought them again to bay 
where Wigan now stands, along the hill-sides and the 
borders of the thickets. The cottagers told Whittaker 
of ancient warriors, in garb long unknown to men, 
who still revisited as phantoms the scene where they 
had fought and died. 

The fugitives were again driven from cover, hunted 
over the ridge, and yet once more overtaken and fallen 
upon with great slaughter. Along their line of flight 
a belt fifty rods in length by seven wide was thickly 
sown with the bones of men. Horseshoes by the 
hundred-weight have been gathered there. What 
remained of the Saxon army scattered through the 
woods and the marshes. 

But individually they were helpless ; they had no 
right to look for mercy, and they were far from home. 
In sheer desperation, those who crossed the river drew 
together in a small peninsula, the neck of which they 



152 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

fortified. Here they were safe for the moment, but 
hopelessly in a trap. The situation was repeated when 
Andrew Jackson all but exterminated an army of the 
Creeks at the Horseshoe bend of the Tallapoosa. It 
may be that hardly more than one Saxon carried the 
news of the four ruinous battles on the Duglas to the 
forces gathering in Westmoreland. 

"Winter intervened. The spring found them hold- 
ing the line of the Pesa, a stream which crosses the 
road to Englewood at the southern border of that 
county. Arthur found them also, fell upon them, and 
drove them to take refuge in the depth of the forest. 
Here, between the Loder and the Erimot, they built up 
about them a stone intrenchment, using the loose flint 
of that district. He surrounded and utterly destroyed 
them. 

In the next campaign he crossed the hills and routed 
a third army near Binchester in Durham, thus ending 
another and more eastward Saxon invasion. The 
defeated enemy withdrew into Northumberland ; but 
he tore this region from them also, a few months later, 
by a victory between the Till and the Glen. This is 
the Nennius battle of the Gleni, which Whittaker 
restores, he thinks, to the proper place in the list. 

Opening the next campaign, he fairly crossed the wall 
into what we now call Scotland, overthrew the Saxons 
there settled at some point on the road to Edinburgh, 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. I53 

and completed their subjection by storming that all but 
impregnable rock fortress. 

Then he was elected Pendragon (Guledig or Impera- 
tor) in the place of Ambrose, who had recently been 
slain, and hurried away to the work of reorganizing 
the defeated southern army. As his men grew more 
confident he directed two attempts — one through Wal- 
thara chase, one through Charwood — on the communi- 
cations of Cerdic. 

These were foiled, and the latter advanced in turn 
as far as the fortified hill of Badbury, commanding 
the junction of two Roman roads. While the Saxons 
were endeavoring to take this place, Arthur fell upon 
them with his legions, and did such execution that 
they made no further attempt in that quarter for the 
next thirty years. 

There is much to be said for this scheme. In all 
that relates to Lancashire it has the support of the 
evidence of the soil and the evidence of tradition. 
He collected the legendary deposit in time to save 
what would probably now be gone. Sharon Turner 
gave him the credit of definitely settling the Duglas 
battle-fields, if no more. But in the historical world 
is anything final ? 

He is probably right also in his identification of the 
Pesa with the Bassas. The change from Prydain to 
Britain affords a striking parallel. We may go with 



154 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

him also into the Englewood for Cat Coit Celidon, and 
agree that Arthur at one time captured Edinburgh. 
Also, it seems true that Arthur went south and fought 
there, after a series of brilliant northern successes. 

But the weak points are obvious. If we may trans- 
pose the first and ninth battles of the list, why not 
others as well ? Any theory of them might be proved 
in that way. Moreover, if the Saxon column of the 
west had reached the very gates of Chester, why was 
their eastern column awaiting an enemy in the neigh- 
borhood of the wall? Again, if there were such a 
fearful slaughter and rout at Badbury, why did not 
Arthur resume possession of the Hampshire coast? 
There is no evidence of his having done so. Cerdic 
found it British ; but he made it, and left it, Saxon. 

Mr. Skene takes a radically different view. Accord- 
ing to him, Arthur began by advancing into Scotland 
from near Carlisle. He met and defeated the Saxons 
(Angles) where the small river Irvine receives the lesser 
waters of the Ayrshire Glen. The "great struggle" 
of the four battles belongs to the Lennox (Linuis) 
region, near one or the other of two Duglas rivers 
which empty into Lake Lomond. The hill Ben Ar- 
thur commemorates his final victory. " He advances 
along the strath of the Carron as far as Dunipace, 
where on the Bonny the fifth (sixth ?) battle is fought ; 
and from (sic) thence marches south through Tweed- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. I55 

dale or the Wood of Celyddon, fighting a battle by the 
way, till he comes to the valley of the Gala, or Wodale, 
where he defeats the Saxons of the east coast. He then 
proceeds to master four great fortresses, — first, Kairlium, 
or Dumbarton ; next, Stirling, by defeating the enemy 
in the tratheu Tryweryd, or Carse of Stirling ; then 
Mynyd Agned, or Edinburgh, the great stronghold of 
the Picts here called Cathbregion ; and lastly, Boudon 
Hill, in the centre of the country between these strong- 
holds." 

Mr. Stuart-Glennie is of the same mind in all essen- 
tials, after a personal mile by mile investigation of that 
region and its people. The first suggestion of this 
Scotch theory came, he supposes, from a writer in the 
Gentleman's Magazine of 1842. Certainly it is of 
recent date, unless in the sense that fragments which 
may be fitted into it have long survived among the 
peasantry. But they will also accord with a more com- 
prehensive scheme, as I shall endeavor to show. 

The attainments and ability of the gentlemen named 
call for thoughtful consideration of whatever they may 
advance. Otherwise there would be a strong tempta- 
tion to regard this particular deliverance as a mere 
freak of fancy, elaborately justified after the fact. One 
would greatly wish to know the name of that seductive 
gentleman of 1842, who has played with Scotch brains 
the Pied Piper of Hamelin. 



156 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

For see, if Arthur conquered so sweepingly, without 
one break in the tide, the great fighting country be- 
tween the two walls and the two seas, — Angles, Picts, 
Dalraidan Scots, and all, — is it in any way credible 
that he would have rested there, with nearly the whole 
of northern England in the hands of the Saxon ? But 
we have yet to hear of a southward campaign for the 
recapture of Caer Ebrauc, of Cymry hurrying from 
Lothian and Ayrshire to take in the rear the troublers 
of Durham and Chester. And again, how comes it 
that Gildas, who does not even know the name of Car- 
lisle, and has but the vaguest notion of the great wall 
itself and the country about it, is so marvellously well 
informed concerning Boudon Hill? And yet again, 
why has all Somersetshire even until now remained 
full of the doings of King Arthur ? No supposition 
of migration from Cumbria into northern Wales, of 
infiltration from northern Wales into southern, — see 
"Encyclopaedia Britannica," — will be any answer to 
questions like these. 

Nor is this all. The Scotch hypothesis oifers no ex- 
planation of the long palsy which bound the Saxons 
of Wessex. As little does it help us to understand 
why there was no overwhelming rush of hostile Dei- 
rans from the northeast after the death of Ambrose. 
What name shall we give the power that held the 
Saxon of Yorkshire and the Saxon of Hampshire 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 157 

equally by the throat for more than a generation ? If 
Arthur were indeed far away triumphing in the country 
between the walls, then assuredly there was another 
and a greater Arthur in central and southern Britain. 

Mr. Pearson has reverted partly to the scheme of 
Geoffrey; partly also to the southern limitations of Dr. 
Guest. With the latter he omits all hypotheses of 
northern and midland warfare. With the former he 
assumes the disembarkation of a Saxon army on the 
coast of Devon. Geraint gathers the militia of the 
district, and resists them at Dartmouth, which is Llong- 
borth. He is slain, his levies give way, and the 
Saxons march on Exeter, which has to do duty as the 
" city of the legion." 

Arthur came up in time to save it by fighting and 
winning his ninth battle. Marching across country, 
the two bodies of men clashed together at the Brue 
or the Brent, and yet again at Cadbury (Camelot), 
Arthur's capital. " Flushed with victory" (why ?), 
the Saxons then made for Bath. "Here, fighting 
with diminished forces against Arthur's whole host, 
they sustained a crushing defeat." 

This appeared about one year previous to the Four 
Ancient Books of Wales ; but I am not sure which 
theory is the more recent. The chief merit of Mr. 
Pearson lies in calling attention again to the accessi- 
bility of Bath by another road than through Hamp- 

14 



158 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

shire; but having carried the nautical explanation so 
far, it is a pity he did not see how profitably it may be 
carried farther. 

Comparing these various explanatory narratives, we 
see that they, after all, have several characteristics in 
common. Finding the list of Nennius compressed 
into a single section, they tend towards a rapid sequence, 
battle following battle in one brief campaign. Ex- 
cepting one or two, they confine the Saxon altogether 
to the land, and there is not a single one who will take 
him otherwise to Cair Lion. Hence we have all sorts 
of Bath-hills and Legion cities, with as many ways 
of getting to them. Finally, the recent critics fail to 
grasp the situation at the beginning as a whole. It 
was not very different from that which afterwards con- 
fronted Alfred. 

As to sequence, we must remember that each item 
loses prominence when events come crowding. Fierce 
and heavy fighting may recur with slight interval, but 
the links in the chain have then no distinctiveness. A 
good case in point is the long duel between Grant and 
Lee, wherein daily, for weeks, great masses of men 
were hurled against each other, as the parallel lines of 
march went slanting across Virginia, until one-fourth 
of the assailing army had been consumed. We call it 
the Wilderness campaign, for it opened there ; but how 
many, besides special students of war, could pretend to 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 159 

name, one by one, those tremendous clashes of arms. 
We may be sure that a Nennius, writing a hundred 
years hence, would make a lump of them all in the 
Wilderness and pass on at a leap to Appomattox. In 
like manner the idea of Napoleon recalls a string of 
salient names, — Toulon, the bridge of Areola, Marengo, 
the Pyramids, Austerlitz, Jena, Borodino, Moscow, 
Leipsic, Waterloo. A chronicler of the olden time 
was merely one who put down events like these, which 
had individually fixed themselves in the popular 
memory. 

Nennius, in four lines, recites four notable victories 
of Vortimer, though we have good reason to believe 
that the fighting extended over more than ten years. 
When he comes to Arthur we find no difference in the 
mode of narration. There are twelve battles, each, as 
before, representing the crisis or most conspicuous 
feature of a campaign. This, at least, is a fair infer- 
ence. 

As to the overland illusion, it has been more fertile 
than any other in fancied obstacles and mistaken 
theory. The Saxon assault was habitually ambidex- 
trous, by land and water. The army pressed forward ; 
the navy swept by to land a force in the enemy's rear. 
The Britons found themselves between fires, or were 
attacked where they had felt very secure. The detour 
over the water grew larger, until in A.D. 500 the 



160 "^^^ TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Saxons sailed around the peninsula Cornwall and came 
up along the western shore. It was a fresh and in- 
viting one. Thereafter they took that wav again and 
again. The greatest lure in all Britain was the now 
growing wealth of its main outlet by the Severn sea. 

As the Danes came at Alfred from the northeast and 
southeast, the Saxons came likewise at Arthur. Each 
ruler for a time had his head-quarters in or near Somer- 
set. Each took the offensive-defensive with success. 
Arthur had against him the necessity of resisting two 
other lines of invasion. He had in his favor the cer- 
tainty of a strong reinforcement if he could break 
through to the far northern Britons. Chieftains like 
Urien were there, and so was whatever remained of the 
old cosmopolite soldier-blood. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE WAES OF AKTHUE — AS THEY WERE. 

Let us see if we can clear away the mist a little. 
In the battle-section of Nennius we find the names 
of two cities, both well known then and existing 
now. Surely good sense would suggest that we should 
give them their ordinary application, unless this in- 
volves a real impossibility. When Geoffrey tells us 
that Arthur was crowned by Dubricius, Archbishop 
of Legions, have we any doubt that Caerleon-upon- 
Usk is meant? When the name Cairlion occurs in 
a list of the Celtic city names, elsewhere given by 
Neunius, the identification is no less prompt and 
certain. To avoid any possibility of mistake, he 
carefully puts both titles together. It was " at Urbs 
Legionis, which is called Cair Lion." One MS. in- 
deed makes this " Urbs Leogis," which may be a 
misspelling, or an attempt of the transcriber to harmo- 
nize the Latin title with lion. But Legionis is gener- 
ally admitted to be the correct rendering ; and surely 
we need not go farther afield. Deva truly was Caer 
Ligion, but never Cair Lion nor Cair Leon ; and it 
became Chester; whereas the great historic city of 
I 14* 161 



162 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Legions never has ceased, however shrunken, to be 
Caerleon. 

As to Mons Badonicus, Mount Badon, Bath Hill, 
we might rest on the assurance of the Durham Gildas 
MS. that it is near the Severn. The passage does not 
occur in the only other MS. copy now extant. This, 
we are told, came from the monks of Glastenbury. 
But who at Glastenbury needed to be told the where- 
abouts of Bath ? So far away as Durham, there was 
possibly more need to be explicit. Briefly, if Gildas 
wrote the sentence, it is conclusive ; if it be an inter- 
polation, it still has a corroborative value. 

But the name suffices. It calls, first of all, for a 
great bathing-place ; by natural implication, the great 
bathing-place of the island. Dr. Guest admitted the 
weakness of his own hypothesis when he said that 
it would be strengthened if baths should be found at 
Badbury. What could be found there, or at the Badon 
of Berkshire, or at the Scotch Boudon Hill, or at any 
other point that wayward conjecture has amused itself 
with, to rival the peculiar glory of the Waters of the 
Sun? Whatever race has come to partake of their 
healing-power, the name given to the fountain city tells 
its own tale. Aquae Solis, Caer-Badus, Bathan-Caester, 
Bath, — a complete chain, with the same idea in every 
link. When Gildas wrote, or Nennius, he can have 
had but this one meaning. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 163 

Caerleon and Bath Hill are of the later battles. 
Whittaker has identified six for us of the first seven. 
But we cannot accept his transposition of the Glein or 
Gleni. Still less can we suppose the series to have 
begun in Northumberland. How could Arthur have 
fought his first battle so far in the enemy's country ? 
If we take the Ayrshire Glen, instead of the North- 
umbrian, we do not greatly help matters. That way 
lies the Scotch hypothesis, which we have found to be 
untenable. There remains only the Glem of Lincoln- 
shire, which has some advantage in name and every 
advantage in situation. A fly-speck or accidental dot 
of any sort will turn Glem into Glein or Gleni. The 
same mark, if not placed with exactness, may be read 
either way, according to fancy. But Glen will not 
become Gleni without adding an entire letter, nor 
Glein without inserting one. Moreover, this little 
stream is in the path of invasion of the eastern column, 
passing by Lincoln (Caer-lud-coit,) towards Leicester or 
Verulam. Somewhere in this vicinity that column 
would naturally be encountered. Its very direct aim at 
the vitals of the land would compel the earliest atten- 
tion of the defenders. Everything considered, we 
need have no hesitation in beginning with the Glem. 

In passing, I attach no importance to " Bass Rock" 
and " Bass," meaning hill, which our Scotch friends 
have been driven to make the most of in locating- the 



164 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

sixth battle. Nennius finds no difficulty in saying 
" the stone by the shore of the Gallic sea/' or " the 
mountain Breguoin/' or " Mount Badon." When he 
says " the river Bassas," he means a river, not a hillock, 
nor a corn-field, nor a silver-mine. We have found 
that there is a river, with substantially that name, in 
precisely the right place. 

Mr. Whittaker thought Gurnion castle was Vinn- 
vium, or Binchester near Durham ; but this will hardly 
carry conviction. Mr. Skene reads it Guinnion, from 
Gwen, white, and looks about for a white castle in 
Scotland, He finds the trace of one which may have 
had that aspect; also an ominous valley name, and a 
legend concerning relics that were once preserved there 
appropriate to this crusader-like battle. The story is 
even appended to, or inserted in, a rather late version 
of Nennius. It may be true; and yet the fighting 
may have taken place otherwhere. More likely it is 
only a bit of fancy-play in a later time. 

Castle Gurnion, or Guinnion, must have been widely 
known throughout Britain, or it would have been dis- 
tinguished with more care on the list. It may be the 
great fortress Garion, or Gareoneum, on the site of Yar- 
mouth. We can understand a zealous rally to save 
the last remaining stronghold of the Saxon shore, the 
last bit of land between Kent and Caithness where the 
cross might yet be upreared. It may have been still 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 165 

in British hands, though under frequent or continual 
beleaguerment. 

Or, if we must choose a white castle, why not take 
that which was pre-eminent in all the land ? The bards 
were in no doubt of being understood when they sung 
the White Hill of Cynvelyn. Bran, who " was exalted 
from the throne of London," found burial there, as the 
story ran, his face being set towards France, that he 
might still frighten enemies from the city. A doubtful 
addition to the Triad makes Arthur " discover" this 
magical head, being unwilling that London should 
owe safety to any power but his own. If this embodies 
any truth at all, the Guledig would stand committed 
to some proof of prowess before the walls ; and what 
could have been more striking than the one said to have 
been chosen ? His onslaught would then be a double 
one, — on the superstition as well as the Saxon. He bla- 
zoned on his shield the sweet face of Mary of Galilee, 
and drove the routed heathen before him all the day. 

This solution is not advanced with absolute assur- 
ance, but it can hardly be called improbable. The 
absence of the name of the city is perhaps an objection. 
But London may have become a fortress, with very 
little more, by then. Its most conspicuous feature 
would be the strong white tower or castle. The place 
is identified in this way by Taliessin, or whoever wrote 
the poem attributed to him in Gunn's edition of the 



166 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Vatican Nennius. He has not a word to say of Lon- 
don-town. He finds the White Hill more conspicuous 
without it. 

The tenth battle offers another difficult problem. 
The name is spelled in divers ways by different copies, 
Trath Tribruit being one of these. At the other ex- 
treme is the Tratheu Trywruid of the bards, which 
Mr. Skene considers the parent form. Tratheu, he 
says, abbreviated sometimes to trath or traeth, means 
the sandy shore of an estuary, or at least a beach. We 
have then to look for a river having a name that might 
have been developed from the same stem as Tribruit 
and Trywruid ; a river with a sandy estuary ; a river 
where the Saxons might land as enemies, or otherwise 
come into collision with the Britons. 

There is nothing along the southern or eastern coast 
of Britain answering these requirements. Mr. Skene 
takes us to the far northern frontier, on the plea that 
the Forth was at one time called Werid, which would 
make the battle-field Tratheu Werid, or Trath Wruid. 
But what becomes of the first syllable, Try or Tri? 
Moreover, how came Arthur so early at Stirling ? The 
interval between this and the Pesa (as yet his most 
northern point that we know of) is not much less than 
that between London and Liverpool. We might as 
well send him to Shetland as to the Firth of Forth in 
one campaign. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 167 

On the western coast it certainly cannot be the 
Severn, the Mersey, the Liddel, the Avon, the Clyde, 
or the Dee. Mr. Pearson has suggested the Brue ; but 
the Brue has no considerable estuary. We seem to be 
restricted to the Ribble, which answers every require- 
ment, unless it be that of name. I do not know its 
etymological history ; but there is no greater gap be- 
tween Trath Tribruit and Trath Ribble than between 
Trath Tribruit and Tratheu Trywruid. A little 
more transformation ought not to stagger our faith. 
Moreover, if the battle were not there, where was it ? 

This leaves only the eleventh engagement, the name 
of which, in one form, has been given. Mr. Skene 
quotes, "in monte dicitur Agned," and says, further, 
" one MS. adds ' Cathregonnum,' and another ' contra 
illas que nos Cathbregyon appelamus.' " Now, Cat 
means battle. He explains elsewhere that the root of 
Brithwyr and Cath-Bregion is Brith, feminine Braith, 
Brych, -done into Gaelic as Breac. This word, he says 
later, " in its primary sense means speckled or spotted ; 
but in a secondary sense, mixed, and may indicate a 
mixed people." Agned, he thinks, may be derived 
from " agneaied," an obsolete word meaning " painted." 
Now, the Picts about Edinburgh were partly Cymric, 
partly Saxon, and very much adorned with woad. 
Therefore, reasons he, with the Picts at Edinburgh 
Arthur must have fought. 



168 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

But Nennius gives this as one of the battles against 
the Saxons; and Edinburgh, like Stirling, is too 
far away. Moreover, the obvious rendering would 
be the particolored or painted mount, and the 
people of the painted mount, not the particolored or 
painted people and the mount of the painted people. 
" Mynyd Agned" is indeed " painted mount," and that 
only • and this is the name given by Taliessin to the 
battle-site. 

Now, Camelot was set on a hill, bright with flags 
and armor, belted with rings of earthwork, in flower 
with varied architecture, the palace of Arthur being 
uplifted over all. It was the frontier capital, the bril- 
liant, daring, fighting battle-city, ever expecting attack. 
It deserved a better epithet than " painted ;" but that 
is not so widely amiss in the language of a primi- 
tive time. There can be no doubt of fierce contention 
there, perhaps more than once, between Briton and 
Saxon. The modern name Cadbury may refer thereto. 
It is thus identified, we know not by what early hand, 
in one MS. copy of Nennius. We cannot do better 
than accept the identification. 

The true story of the Arthurian campaigns would 
seem to be this. At the same time with the grand as- 
sault of Cerdic, at Netley, or in the confusion following 
the death of Ambrose, the northern Saxons came 
crowding down, after their usual fashion, with one 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 169 

column on each side of the back-bone of the island. 
Arthur, issuing from Caer Leriou (formerly Ratae, now 
Leicester), or possibly advancing up the Ermine way, 
met their northeastern army as it descended or crossed 
the valley of the Glem ; drove it back to the mouth 
of that stream, and there inflicted, on the shore of 
the Wash, a defeat whereby men chiefly remembered 
the campaign. The Saxons may have taken to their 
boats, and escaped him by sea. One result of his 
victory was the relief of Caer-lud-coit (Lindom, Lin- 
coln), which had long been standing isolated beyond 
the true border. Geoifrey puts this later, but we 
cannot trust him. No doubt the uplands of Lincoln- 
shire were regained. 

At the west, the border-line had been carried back 
to the Mersey. Chester was in danger. The young 
general went to its relief; took the offensive; pressed 
the Saxons northward to the Duglas, and struck them 
a severe blow near Wigan. Perhaps for the time he 
drove them from the little valley. 

But they returned in greater force the next season, 
and the next, and the next. The bone of contention 
was there, in spite of indecisive victory, until at last 
he was able to drive them bodily north as far as West- 
moreland. A final success on the Pesa made a com- 
plete clearance of all that region. No doubt it put 
him at once in communication with the doughty 
H 15 



170 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

chieftains who were fighting independently near the 
great wall. 

But the Deirans of York were unbroken as yet, 
although beaten back along both lines of approach. 
They invented a third, by way of surprise, and fell into 
a trap, whence, by all accounts, none issued alive and 
free. Hardly any other event made a deeper impress 
on the minds of that generation than this total over- 
throw in the haunted wood of Celidon. The recovery 
of York perhaps followed it. 

Now the scene moves to the southward. At this 
time Arthur may first have been formally invested 
with the supreme command throughout Britain. As 
Guledig or Imperator, what a claim London must have 
had upon him ! — the most renowned of all his cities, 
though fallen into decay ; the most recalcitrant, and 
thus in need of conciliation ; the most endangered, so 
requiring aid ! He found her with the enemy before 
the walls, the irrational hope of superstition in her 
heart. By an act of angry policy, none the less efiec- 
tive, he scattered at once the megrims of his adherents 
and the forces of the enemy. What the head of Bran 
could never have done, was the work of the shield 
which bore the blessed Queen of Heaven. Before it 
the Saxon rout went wildly towards the sea. London 
was all for Arthur. Arthur it may have been who 
gave her in return that wide circle of defences which 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 171 

Dr. Freeman has traced on the eastward along the hills 
of Lexden. Camulodunum was within the enclosure, 
and so was the best of Essex. Probably even a part 
of the Caint came under her sway. How the historic 
city must have bloomed again and hoped again ! 

But while reawakening the southeast, Arthur may 
well have neglected, without fault, the far southwest, 
which would seem almost beyond reach of the enemy. 
At any rate, he was too far away to know promptly of 
any assault and repel it in the beginning. Cerdic from 
his lair by the Itchin saw the opportunity. He had 
taken that water-way before, and with deadlier intent 
he took it again. The white sails brightened and 
darkened, and the long oars flashed in lifting, all along 
the southern Devonian shore. They rounded the rough 
promontory of Land's End. They came sweeping 
back off the northern coast. And soon all the bevy 
of cities about the Severn Eiver and the Severn sea 
were fluttering and arming, while the country-side 
poured in. Riding secure in the open water, the 
spoiler made choice at leisure of his prey. He bent 
his swoop on the legion city, the crowned Caerleon. 

But the walls were strong, and men rode night and 
&ay across the width of Britain to warn Arthur. By 
night and day, when the news reached him, we may be 
sure he came hurrying back with his veterans, the men 
of Duglas and Celidon. An ever-growing force, for 



172 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

all the midland country must have been streaming 
towards and after him. When that comet broke on the 
astounded Saxons, there was shattering and splintering ; 
and the ocean took them, and Caerleon was free. 

Arthur now adopted for the south and southwest a 
comprehensive system of defence. According to a local 
writer of Somerset, the distinguishing feature of this 
was a triangle enclosing a triangle, every corner of each 
a formidable stronghold. The inner line, twelve miles 
every way, was marked by the fortresses of Mona 
Acutus and Tor Hill and the trebly-fortified hill-city of 
Camelot ; the outer line by St. Michael's, Mount Came- 
lot, and Caerleon. They thus came together in a single 
southeastern apex, doubly based and doubly braced, 
pointing like a spear-head at Cerdic in his lair. Be- 
yond it, that way, were outlying fortresses, which no 
doubt had their share of strengthening. Farther west, 
in what we now call Cornwall, are notable earthwork 
remains that still bear the name of Arthur. Much of 
the protective work of the western cities may probably 
be referred to the same active time. 

But, as before, the enemy struck at a remote point, 
while the work of fortifying was going forward. Per- 
haps Cerdic had not yet withdrawn beyond Bristol 
channel. Or he may have taken refuge in Ireland, 
soliciting the ready aid of Scottish marauders. In any 
case he selected the shore north of Wales for his de- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 173 

scent. And now again Arthur must hurry away, to 
defend, as in five earlier campaigns, the thriving city 
by the Dee. Near it, or beyond it, he met the enemy, 
and drove them from point to point, overwhelming 
them at last in the act of embarking at the mouth of 
the nibble. 

It is easy to understand the growth of vindictive- 
ness in Cerdic. Baffled again and again, he made right 
for the throat of his adversary, when once more able 
to take the field. Passing between the impregnable 
Sorbiodunum and that Caer Caradoc, where the son of 
Ambrose kept watch over the border, the Saxon broke 
through to Camelot. 

Here was the palace of his arch-enemy, the city of 
that enemy's creation. Wild with delight, the Saxons 
came rushing up the slope and swarming over the 
outer earthwork ring. In hot counter-charges the 
Britons, favored by position, drove thera back again 
and again. As the one army weakened, far from 
home, the other grew. Soon the whole region was 
alive, so that Cerdic could neither advance nor stand 
still. At the first indication of giving way, we may 
judge how Arthur would fall on him from the 
" painted mountain" with his men. We may see the 
swarm of missiles from every side, the incursions and 
the cuttings-off incident to their retreat. In repassing 
the outlying fortresses there must have been haud-to- 

15* 



174 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

hand work, to get by at all. When Cerdic had safely 
regained Winchester he may well have given up the 
overland route as ruinous, while there should be an 
Arthur in the way. 

Yet he gathered all his forces in a final effort, this 
time choosing for his descent — as once before — the 
western side. His first object was the sacking of that 
soft, luxurious bathing city where more of Rome yet 
lingered than elsewhere in the island, about the upwell- 
ing waters of the sun. It was a repetition of the Caer- 
leon campaign, with this change of object and a more 
decisive issue. Again Arthur came on the invading 
army before it could beat down the walls or climb over 
them. Of necessity Cerdic turned to face him, " the 
Saxons," says Geoffrey, being " drawn out in the shape 
of a wedge as their manner was. And they, notwith- 
standing that the Britons fought with great eagerness, 
made a noble defence all that day; but at length, 
towards sunsetting, climbed up the next mountain, 
which served them for a camp, for they desired no 
larger extent of ground, since they confided very much 
in their numbers. The next morning Arthur with his 
army went up the mountain, but lost many of his men 
in the ascent, by the advantage which the Saxons had 
in their station at the top, whence they could pour 
down upon him with much greater speed than he was 
able to advance against them. Notwithstanding, after 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 175 

a very hard struggle, the Britons gained the summit of 
the hill and quickly came to a close engagement with 
the enemy." 

Then follows a truly marvellous account of single- 
handed prowess, indicating that Arthur led a furious 
final charge, and the Saxons, hemmed in on every 
side, went down by thousands. No greater defeat 
ever befell them. Cerdic renounced all further aggres- 
sion, Arthur conceding him the part of Hampsliire 
where he had now been settled so long. The war with 
Wessex was ended. 

The exact site of this memorable achievement may 
have been Solsbury Hill, near Bath, where Mr. Earle 
has found the indications of an ancient fort. 

Eight, or perhaps even twelve, years had been con- 
sumed by this series of campaigns. They were conclu- 
sive as to the mainland of what we now call England, 
if we except hostilities vaguely indicated in 527, an 
entry which after all may refer to the beginning of the 
conquest of the Isle of Wight. While Arthur lived, 
no Saxon ever dared to stir with hostile intent beyond 
a narrow fringe of coast-line, mainly at the southeast. 
Nor was there a single expedition in force from the 
Continent, such as we have heard of before, and shall 
hear of again, unless we are to so regard the appear- 
ance of a Saxon dynasty in Essex. 

But there was work yet awaiting Arthur. Berne- 



176 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

cian Angles had overrun the eastern and raiddle 
Scotch lowlands, and were threatening the cities of 
the west. Much of the country that they held had 
been theirs for generations, but the Lennox region was 
lately won. Arthur moved northward to dispossess 
them. In a series of battles against a composite force 
of Angles, Picts, and Scots he made Loch Lomond 
and its tributary valleys British again. 

Before or after this, or both, he made Carlisle his 
head-quarters, giving life to the still surviving crop of 
Arthurian legends. He perhaps reoccupied and re- 
stored York, as Geoffrey tells us. Entering Scotland 
again, in a series of battles he overcame the Saxons 
there settled as far as the carse of Stirling and the 
eastern sea, took by storm or blockade the almost 
impregnable Pictish fort at Edinburgh, and gave the 
dominion of the conquered country in equal shares to 
three young northern chieftains, Urien being the most 
noted. 

Some years of his life must have been devoted to 
this great work between the walls. Perhaps the sec- 
ond Guinevere, whom we learn of through Welsh 
legend, belongs to that period, as she came from the 
family of a Scottish king. She was the best beloved 
of the three. The unfaithful and ruinous one followed 
her. All had golden locks, the especial admiration 
of the Celt. The second only was found buried by his 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 177 

side, her sunny hair yet bright and fresh, a graven 
inscription preserving Jier name. 

So ran the mediseval tale; but modern research 
attributes the revelation to priestly and kingly art. 
We do not certainly know that there was more than 
one Guinevere. A single personality, differently seen 
and reported, may well have been broken into three. 
Gildas and Merlin underwent a similar division, with 
no just cause, to the great distress of inquirers. We 
are learning to piece them together again. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE EMPIRE OF AETHTIR. 

In the Middle Ages a multitude of impossible adven- 
tures and achievements were invented, to fill up his 
riper years. One of these, the war against Eome, 
though possibly suggested by that of Maxen Wledig, 
may contain a kernel of truth. It would be sur- 
prising if the great British ruler did not cross the 
Channel into the lesser Britain. Once there, he could 
hardly attempt any military movement without find- 
ing " Roman" enemies. The fragments of that empire, 
the remote half-bred or quarter-bred descendants of its 
colonies and legions, held vehemently by the name. 
Arthur, now assured in power, may have been more 
obviously a Celt than ever. Here was an opening for 
discord. 

Wherever he went, or whatever he did, Brittany 
accepted him with devotion. It discovered a new 
Avalon ; it gave Merlin his magic sleep in the forest 
of Broceliande ; it made a second Camelot of Carduel. 
Its wild chants perpetuate the sudden onslaught of 
Arthur, deemed afar, the glimmering over the moun- 
tain of his armored host. Almost within the memory 
178 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 179 

of living: men, the name of this national hero has 
gone into battle with the shouting Breton. The songs 
that tell of his glory have not died away even now. 

Perhaps — and legend says so — therein was the 
beginning of the end. So long an absence, with so 
many of his soldiery, would be sure to awaken dis- 
content. This gathered about a popular chief, sou of 
that Llew to whom Arthur had given rule in the Lo- 
thians. The half-conquered Saxons and other heathen 
folk were very willing to volunteer for service under 
him. Maelgwn (Lancelot), of North Wales, the 
strongest man left in Britain, was thinking more of 
the Guinevere than of his duty to their absent lord. 
But the tidings were borne to Arthur, and he came 
rushing back with a bitter heart, meeting a welcome 
death in the hour of victory. 

A whole cycle of tales and poetry gathered about 
this ending as time went by. Yet the spot is uncer- 
tain still. There are those who find it by the bank of 
a Cornish river ; to Tennyson it is hidden forever with 
Lyonesse, that lost land of the sea ; and the Scotch- 
man with greater conviction, identifies a Camlan or 
Camelon amid his own lakes and heather. It does 
not seem to be quite literally true that all "King 
Arthur's table, man by mau, had fall'n" in " this last 
weird battle of the west," or northern moorlands. We 
meet with some of them again. But the loss, as at 



180 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Arderydd, was no doubt a national calamity, for free 
Britain followed Arthur in mighty downfall. Supreme 
in the last hour of his life, he passed, and no man 
knew whither ; but hope went with him. His burial, 
if burial there were, remained "a mystery to the 
world." The Briton, harried and suffering, found 
comfort in the insane delusion of his coming again. 

It matters little whether we call Arthur king or 
emperor or guledig. Whatever his title, to such a 
man in such a time all the essentials of sovereignty 
would certainly come. His story is that of a military 
chieftain, who conquered peace and kept it, filling the 
land with high ideals and chivalric examples for many 
years. In the great mass of legendary lore which has 
come down to us through every channel of Europe, we 
find this conception repeated and glorified. It has 
constituted the abiding memory of mankind. 

Nor are we without some direct and positive evidence 
of that period. Says Gildas, writing of the great 
victory of Mount Badon and what followed, " For 
as well the remembrance of such a terrible desolation 
of the island, as also of the unexj)ected recovery of the 
same, remained in the minds of those who were eye- 
witnesses of the wonderful events of both, and in regard 
thereof kings, public magistrates, and private persons, 
with priests and clergymen, did all and every one of 
them live orderly according to their several vocations." 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 181 

Such is the witness of a contemporary of King Arthur, 
— one who is thought to have been a scribe and holy 
man in his court at Caerleon, yet who rarely saw any- 
thing to praise in the doings of humankind. 

It was very certainly a brilliant, active epoch. Even 
science, of the empirical sort which alone was possible 
in those days, had some share of attention. We find 
the son of Arthur esj)ecially commended in the Triads 
for his zeal in that regard. We hear, rather amusingly, 
of Merlin and his nine scientific bards, and of " bat- 
talions of scientific ones." Probably, as with the occult 
of our own day, science and necromancy were not well 
divided. 

But in literature that period shone, being indeed the 
first of the great eras of British poetry. To Arthur 
himself are credited some spirited verses in praise of 
his three " battle-knights." The aged Merlin, — prince, 
minister, magician, and poet, — threw the whole weight 
of his influence and example the same way. Llywarch, 
prince of Argoed, began his career of arms and song 
under Arthur, although it may well be that his most 
moving elegies were not composed until after the death 
of his hopes, his kindred, and the great king. Aneurin, 
Taliessin, and Cian belong in part to the later hours of 
the same golden day. They sang on in the starlight. 

De Villemarque fixed indeed a much earlier date 
for Cian Gwenclan (the pure of blood), but in this he 

16 



\ 



182 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

is at odds with Nennius. He has done better service 
in rescuing a fragment or two of this bard, which have 
been kept alive by oral recitation these thirteen hun- 
dred years in a corner of Brittany. According to this 
investigator, there was a MS. volume of Cian's poems 
in existence near the end of the last century. It per- 
ished with the monastery which gave it shelter, — one 
of the many calamities of the French Revolution. 

Cian does not appear at all in the Four Ancient 
Books of Wales, translated and edited by Mr. Skene ; 
but we have specimens there from divers lesser bards ; 
although Taliessin, Aneurin, Llywarch, and Merddin 
make up the body of the metrical array. Unfortunately 
there is no doubt that some of these productions are 
spurious or have undergone manipulation. Others are 
subjects of controversy among the most erudite. Even 
in those of agreed antiquity passages occur to which 
we have lost the clue, and which read like fantastic 
nonsense. 

This may be in part because of allusion to tales now 
long forgotten, or the introduction of magical formulae 
and far-fetched allegory. But much must also be laid 
to the uncertainties of translation when dealing with 
words that have long been obsolete. Thus the very 
oldest relic of Celtic verse which we possess — older 
by perhaps three hundred years than even the Black 
Book of Caermarthen — has been variously construed as 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 183 

the " trifling eflPusion" of a young officer in the Pictish 
army, who went on a guard with a copy of Juvencus, 
a Frank servant, and a copper kettle ; as the protest 
of an aggrieved bard, who will by no means become 
musical until assured of his dinner ; and as the lamen- 
tation of Llywarch of Argoed, when left to his evil 
fortune with but a single follower. 

Happily the case is not usually so extreme. Talies- 
sin may treat us mockingly to " a primitive and in- 
genious address, when thoroughly elucidated ;" but he 
often chooses to be comprehensible. Llywarch is 
always as direct and human, as martial or touching, 
as need be. There is no misunderstanding the universal 
language. 

Making every allowance, we are fairly well enlight- 
ened as to the poetry of that great era. We can even 
imperfectly distinguish its varying phases. The courtly 
school of Taliessin, in love with decorative trapping, 
with historical retrospect, with ingenious and fantastic 
mystery ; the oracular school of Merlin (Merddin), its 
nearest kin, but more habitually prophetic and more 
regular in its beauty ; the bitter reactionary school of 
Cian, properly frowned upon and passed by ; the pious 
school, which found voices in Elaeth and other minor 
bards, though the versatile Taliessin joined them ; the 
epic school of Aneurin ; the ballad school of Llywarch, 
an honor to any language or to any congeries of men. 



184 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Except a happy hit here and there, the whole mass 
awaits a truly poetic rendering. It was composed in 
rhyme ; we have it in strings of rhymeless words imi- 
tating (distantly) the Old Testament and Walt Whit- 
man. Imagine Hohenlinden treated in that way, or 
Scots who ha'e wi' Wallace bled ! Their rhymed 
triplets are but the echo of Llywarch, with the ad- 
dition of a final line. Yet he had notes beyond Camp- 
bell, beyond Burns, — a more poignant pathos, a 
stateliness of mournful meditation. 

" Bassa's chapel here rests to-night. 
Here ends, here shrinks within himself, 
He that was the shelter in battle, 
Heart of the men of Argoed. 

" Kyndylan's hall is dark to-night, 
Without fire, without light, 
Let there come spreading silence 'round thee. 

'• Kyndylan's hall pierces me to see it, 
Without roof, without fire. 
Dead is my chief, myself alive. 

*' Kyndylan's hall is piercing cold to-night 
After the honor that befell me. 
After the men, after the women it sheltered." 

Here we touch an element of the life and poetry of 
that time which may not be passed by. It has been 
said, by Mr. Pearson, that the Celt woman was little 
better than a squaw ; and certainly no other literature 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 185 

could present so great an array of verse with so few 
allusions in it to her and her relations with man. But 
on closer inquiry one sees that there is more of manly 
reticence than of brute indifference in this, — an implied 
respect, a high estimate habitually taken for granted. 

We are told that it is " usual for maids to be 
lovely." That "after Adam, well, he made Eva." 
We hear of " Mary the Mother of Christ, the praise 
of women." 

That sex is nearly always represented as acting 
nobly : 

" A female restrained the din, 
She came forth altogether lovely." 

It is tenderly appreciated in all human relations. 

" Fair Ffreur, there are brothers who cherish thee, 
And who have not sprung from the ungenerous." 

" Were it the wife of Gyrthmwl, 
Loud would be her scream, she would be languid to-day ; 
She would deplore the loss of her heroes." 

" Why should so much anxiety come to me? 
I am anxious about the maid, 
The maid that is in Arddig." 

Any prospect of future degradation is a real distress. 

•^ "A period will come. 

How miserable that it should come, but come it will. 
Maids will be bold and wives wanton." — Merlik. 
16* 



186 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

This tender reverence follows its object beyond life : 

" The graves of the sea-marsh, 
Little ornament have they. 
There is Sanaug, a stately maiden ; 
There is Kun, ardent in war ; 
There is Earwin, the daughter of Henvin ; 
There are Lledin and Llywy." 

Not that her softer aspects are overlooked. Where 
can anything sweeter be found than this ? 

" Gwydion ap Don, of the toiling spirits. 
By enchantments produced a woman from blossoms." 

Manhood keeps its fealty even to the going down of 
the sun. Cries Llywarch, — 

" Young maidens love me not, 
I am visited by none, 
I cannot move about. 
Ah, Death that he does not seek me I 

" Wooden crook, is it not the spring, 
When the cuckoos are brownish, when the foam is bright ? 
I am destitute of a maiden's love. 

" Surely old age is uniting itself with me 
From my hair to my teeth, 
And my gleaming eye, which the women loved." 

To this princely poet, this veritable knight of Kijjg 
Arthur, the loss of love is evidently the worst part of 
the loss of life. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 187 

Even when slighter sexual relations are touched 
upon, it is without levity, indeed with that contempla- 
tive melancholy which seems as natural to the Cymry 
as the love of fighting, of carousal, or of mystery. 
Says one, resignedly, — 

" To my narrow abode : to the limits assigned to my repose, 
After my horse and indulgence in fresh mead, 
And social feasting and gallantry with Women. 
I will not sleep. I will meditate on my end." 

Now, these are almost the only references to woman 
or feminine influence in the Four Ancient Books of 
Wales, and the few others are like them. To catch 
their full significance, we must not only remember 
their very early date, but set them side by side in 
thought with the next great upgrowth of poetry in 
Britain, the lowland balladry of their supplanters. 
A rich mine truly, and one which, from the days 
of Bishop Percy to those of Mr. Childs, we have 
never been weary of delving in ! Yet things are 
brought to light which show that Britain had gone 
backward in what makes man noblest. Here is the 
feminine element in excess, but hardly in esteem. The 
wife of the ballads is oftenest a patient Grissel or a 
household pet in danger of slaughter on suspicion. 
The maid of the ballads is oftenest employed in elud- 
ing or rewarding the atrocities of men. It is quite in 
the order of things that a fine gentleman should assail 



188 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

a poor girl on the highway or break into her bower at 
night. If her wiles get the better of him, and she 
slips away unharmed, it is a fair combat of wits, with 
the laugh against the assailant. If the worst of evils 
befall her, the minstrel is chiefly concerned to bring 
about a marriage, and there is matter of congratula- 
tion in it all. Wrongs to make the blood boil are a 
part of the normal horseplay of life. The wise woman 
will accept the fact and address herself to please the 
offender, that perchance he may be willing to have her 
still. Measured by such standards, how marvellously 
pure and high is the ideal of the Cymric poetry. 

Again it has been said, not overwisely, that the love 
of nature belongs only to recent years. Yet the old 
bards of Britain, the moment they can get out of the 
smoke and din of battle, are as alive as Walt Whitman 
himself to the sympathetic joy of existence, the beauty 
abounding everywhere. These breathe through all the 
mysticism of Taliessin. 

" The tops of the birch covered us with leaves, 
And transformed us and changed our faded state ; 
The branches of the oak have ensnared us. 
Not of mother and father, 
When I was made, 
Did my Creator create me. 
Of nine-formed faculties, 
Of the fruit of fruits. 
Of the fruit of the primordial God, 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 189 

Of primroses and blossoms of the hill, 

Of the flowers of trees and shrubs. 

Of earth of an earthly course 

"When I was formed. 

Of the flower of nettles, 

Of the water of the ninth wave." 

Merddyn (or Merlin) begins one of his prophetic 
poems with 

*' Sweet apple-tree of delightful branches. 
Budding luxurious," 

and keeps repeating 

" Sweet apple-tree which grows by the river-side. 
Sweet apple-tree of delicate bloom." 

Here is a winter picture. 

" Let the snow fall ; white as mountain land, 
Bare the timber of the ship at sea. 
Cold the stream, bright the sky. 

The evening is brief, the tops of the trees are bending. 
The bees live on their store, the noise of the birds is small, 
The day is without dew. 

The hill-top stands out plainly ; red the dawn. 
Long the night, bare the moor, hoary the clifi". 
Gray the fair gull on the precipice ; 
Eough the seas ; there will be rain to-day. 
The thrush has a spotted breast, 
Spotted the breast of the thrush ; 
The edge of the bank is broken 

By the hoofs of the lean, crooked, and stooping hart. 
. . . The ford is frozen over ; 
Cold the wave, variegated the bosom of the sea." 



190 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Here, by another hand, is the converse : 
♦' The beginning of summer is a most pleasant season ; 
Tuneful the birds, green the stalks of plants ; 
Ploughs are in the furrow, oxen in the yoke ; 
Green is the sea, variegated the land. 
When cuckoos sing on the branches of pleasant trees, 
May my joy become greater." 

It is Taliessin who tells us of 

" The influence of an order of men 
Exposed to the breeze of the sky." 

He proclaims 

" A prize in every unveiling. 
"When the dew is undisturbed, 
And the wheat is reaped, 
And the bees are gentle. 
And the myrrh and frankincense 
And transmarine aloes. 
And the golden pipes of Llew, 
And a curtain of excellent silver, 
And a ruddy gem and berries, 
And the foam of the sea." 

He it was who composed the "Song to the Great 

World" and the " Song to the Wind." We find also 

these among " The Pleasant Things of Taliessin :" 

" Pleasant berries in the time of harvest, 
Also pleasant wheat upon the stalk. 
Pleasant the sun moving in the firmament. 
Pleasant a steed with thick mane tangled. 
Pleasant the eagle on the shore of the flowing sea. 
Pleasant the open field to cuckoos and the nightingale." 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 191 

There is also a long poem, attributed to Llywarch 
Hen, every stanza of which begins with " Bright," a 
great array of trees and other plants being successively 
called to mind with this adjective. 

Another, beginning " Sitting high upon a hill," is 
richer and more winning. It belongs to the period of 
old age. 

" I am no hunter, I keep no animal of the chase; 
I cannot move about ; 
As long as it pleases the cuckoo, let her sing. 

" At Aber Cuaug the cuckoos sing 
On the blossomed-covered branches ; 
The loud-voiced cuckoo, let her sing awhile. 

" High above the merry oak 
I have listened to the song of birds ; 
The loud cuckoo, — every one remembers what he loves. 

" The birds are clamorous ; the beach is wet ; 
Let the leaves fall ; the exile is unconcerned. 
I will not conceal it, I am ill this night. 

" Hear the wave of sullen din and loud 
Amidst the pebbles and gravel. 
What js, detested by man here is detested by God above." 

Finally (on this head), here is the song of Taliessin 
to his soul : 

" Soul, since I was made in (of?) necessity blameless. 
True it is, woe is me that thou shouldst have come to my design, 
Neither for my own sake nor for death, nor for end, nor for 
beginning. 



192 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

" It was with seven faculties that I was thus blessed. 
■ With seven created beings I was placed for purification. 
I was gleaming fire when I was caused to esist, 
I was dust of the earth and grief could not reach me, 
I was a high wind, being less evil than good. 
I was mist on a mountain seeking supplies (of the breath ?) of 

stags, 
I was blossoms of trees on the face of the earth. 
If the Lord had blessed me he would have placed me on (left 
me in ?) matter. 
Soul, since I was made — — " 

It will be seen that in form, not less than in sub- 
stance, this old Celtic poet, as translated, is often 
startlingly near to the most modern of the moderns. 
There are indeed passages where the parallel will pro- 
voke a smile. For example, — 

" I am in want of a stick straightened in song. 
I am a harmonious one ; I am a clear singer ; 
I am steel ; I am a Druid ; 
I am an artificer ; I am a scientific one ; 
I am a serpent ; I am love ; I will indulge in feasting ; 
I am not a confused bard drivelling ; 
I am a cell ; I am a cleft ; I am a restoration ; 
I am the depository of song ; I am a literary man." 

One part of the oddity is that the translations were 
made before Mr. Whitman's writings became generally 
known, some of them before he published at all. On 
the other hand, it is very unlikely that they can have 
influenced him. The resemblance is not confined to 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. I93 

Taliessin. Most of his contemporaries have a decidedly 
Whitmanesque appearance and quality in their English 
dress. 

This may be partly due to a remoter likeness which 
he and they have in common. Life was primitive and 
elemental to them, as to him, by a kind of half-wilful 
reversion. A great party clung to the Roman name, 
and we may have traces of Roman magnificence in the 
fites at Caerleon and the love of sumptuous garments. 
But these were on the surface, and fill but a little space 
even in their songs. The tales which give them promi- 
nence are mostly, if not altogether, of later origin. At 
heart and in body the typical Briton of that day was 
a Greek of Homer's time, with a moustache and a 
tincture of Christianity. 

The chief held revel in his hall, on the hill-top, 
whatever of Roman ease and decoration might linger 
in the white valley city under his wing. There the 
lights were ; there men slept and feasted ; there was 
the great gathering- din of merry voices about the winter 
fire-hearth. His first duty and glory was to be an 
ample dispenser of mead ; a princely re warder of the 
minstrel who sang before him. If he could touch the 
harp himself, it was all the more in his honor ; but a 
steady head over the flagon, a mighty arm in the battle, 
were more indispensable qualifications. 

The bibulous element in these lays is ample, absurd, 
in 17 



194 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

and barbaric. Without drinking, there was no fight- 
ing. " From the banquet of wine and mead they went 
to the strife of mail-clad warriors. The men went to 
Catraeth fed with mead and drunk. Firm and vigorous ; 
U were wrong if I neglected to praise them." ..." The 
men went to Catraeth with the dawn. Mead they 
drank, yellow, sweet, ensnaring. In that year many 
a minstrel fell." ..." The men went to Gododin with 
laughter and sprightliness. Bitter were they in battle." 
. . . After all, does not the heart warm to that faulty, 
reckless, gallant people, so alive to the suu and the 
shadow, so indomitably at war with their fate ? 

The chieftain must lead in wassail, but in the onset 
also. The time had not yet come when he could be 
other than his own most redoubtable soldier. These 
personal exploits were the ones which admirers vaunted 
and magnified. Arthur himself had the credit of 
slaying nine hundred of Cerdic's men with his own 
hand in a single battle. Of his foster-brother we are 
told, "It rejoiced Cai as long as he hewed down!" 
"When the great Guledig fell, Lancelot (Maelgwn), the 
second-best man of his host, came forward rapidly to 
pre-eminence. All the poetic references are in this 
vein. The onslaught of Cunedda is " Like the roaring 
of wind against the ashen spears." Of Urien, — 

" Like death is his spear, 
Killing his enemy." 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. I95 

Gyndylan may be a " bright intelligence departed," 
but it was none the less imperative that when he de- 
scended to the battle there should be " carnage in two 
swaths." To call a great general a " burner/' a " wild 
boar," "a bull of conflict," is complimentary in the 
highest degree. 

Partly this grows out of the conditions of warfare. 
The fighting is chiefly man to man as in Homer's day, 
the same weapons being used and the same defensive 
armor, the metal bronze predominating even yet. The 
war-chariot reappeared, although not to be the national 
means of assault, as before the Romans came. But 
there were battle-chargers in plenty. In the song of 
Llongborth, stanza after stanza is given up to a glori- 
fication of Geraint's equestrian resources, and it is more 
common than not in these poems to find an eminent man 
and an eminent horse extolled together. The Briton, 
like the Greek, fought mightily on foot when he must, 
but was not by choice a foot-soldier. And he greatly 
prized his steed . The powerful dumb comrade, who bore 
not the rider only, but the full weight of his armor, 
who sped away with him from defeat and hurled him 
crashing into victory, could hardly be extolled too 
highly. Its trappings, its very food, became not only 
a matter of daily concern, but of frank and childlike 
announcement. Even in the minstrel there was an 
abiding conviction that his hearers might be relied on 



196 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

for interest in this rudimentary topic. Homer is at pains 
to tell us how " Champing golden grain and pulse, the 
steeds stood by the chariots waiting for the dawn." 
Llywarch likewise assures us, — 

" Under the thigh of G-eraint were swift racers, 
Long-legged, with wheat for their corn, 
Euddy ones with the assault of spotted eagles." 

Only he has not had Tennyson for a translator. 
Here is Aneurin's picture of a gallant young chief- 
tain : 

" Of manly disposition was the youth ; 

Valor had he in the tumult ; 

Fleet, thick-maned chargers were under the thigh of the illus- 
trious youth ; 

A shield, light and broad, 

Was on the slender swift flank ; 

A sword, blue and bright, 

Grolden spurs and ermine. 

Caeawg, the leader, wherever he came, 

Breathless in the presence of a maid, would he distribute the 
mead. 

The front of his shield was pierced. When he heard 

The shout of battle, he would give no quarter wherever ha 
pursued ; 

He would not retreat from the combat until he caused 

Blood to stream ; like rushes would he hew down the men who 
would not yield. 

Caeawg, the combatant, the stay of his country, 

Whose attack is like the rush of the eagle into the sea when 
allured by his prey." 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. I97 

And of the army in motion : 

" The men went to Oatraeth in battle array and with, shout of 

war, 
"With the strength of steeds and with dark-brown harness and 

with shields, 
With uplifted javelins and sharp lances. 
With glittering mail and with swords." 

Elsewhere we read of golden torques, amber wreaths, 
white plumes, and enamelled armor. There are more 
peaceful hints also, — the golden cups, the cups of glass, 
the chief priest's crozier, the rushes that burned in the 
hall. These from the Gododin. Add the witness of 
the other bards, the authentic triads, the elder tales, 
and we may get a fairly just and vivid conception of 
that sunny, breezy, angry life, its impulsive wildness, 
its childlike love of indulgence and adornment, its 
savage simplicity. Perhaps these traits become ac- 
centuated as we get farther from the prosperous rule 
of Arthur. 

There was more disturbance of formal and external 
worship after that ; but no doubt the major part of the 
country, not Saxon, remained as a rule Christian in 
observance and creed. By an odd freak of sand and 
sea, two little churches of the Arthurian time, or not 
much later, have been buried, preserved, and uncovered 
along the Cornish coast, mute witnesses, but beyond 
contradiction. They show what was the religious 

17* 



198 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

growth which sent its rootlets even to these remote 
and precarious nooks of man's domain. Some light, 
too, they throw on the ecclesiastical arrangements of 
the time. But they can do no more. In their prime 
they were but the rallying-points of out-of-the-way 
parishes. It would not be safe to infer anything from 
them as to what may have been at Amesbury, or Glas- 
tenbury, or the City of Legions. 

Yet it is hard to believe that the peculiar tenets of 
orthodox Christianity had taken hold of the more 
intimate beliefs and feelings of men. Death is death 
to the bards at any rate, whenever the best of them 
feel deeply. It is the straight and narrow house ; no 
portal opening into glory. Llywarch cries out against 
old age and longs for its ending ; but as an ending, no 
more. He bewails the encasement of his friend within 
the black boards ; the pity of it that the delicate white 
flesh must go under ground. He consoles himself for 
the death of his many sons, not by the joys of Para- 
dise, but by the thought that they died in duty and 
like men. His nearest approach to a sustaining re- 
ligious outlook is in the memorable words, — 

" What is detested by man here is detested by God above." 

Yet any deist might utter them. 
Cian had the name of being distinctly anti-Christian, 
and the few verses of his composition doubtfully sur- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 199 

viving in Brittany may be construed to bear out the 
charge. 

In Myrddin (Merlin) I find nothing more definite 
than, " Would that my end had come !" 

It is true that Taliessin has much to say in some 
places about theological dogmas, and presents them in 
a conventional way. But this is when he seems least 
sincere, and most like one indulging in intellectual 
exercise. He was, as he called himself, " a literary 
man," a professional in that line, beyond what can be 
said of his fellows. He wrote of Alexander the 
Great and the children of Israel. He chanted " death- 
songs" for Corroi and Uther, who died before his day, 
if they ever lived at all. He even turned out a spirited 
elegy of Cunedda, which has been a puzzle to every- 
body, so full of personal reminiscence is it, so vast in 
its impudence, — if he really meant the great chieftain 
who flourished (according to Nennius) generations 
before Taliessin was born. But it seems to be ad- 
mitted that he did know and love the household of 
Urien of Reged. When Theodric, the flame-bearer, 
slew Owain, the bard was stirred into deep feeling and 
high poetry. Yet there is but one reference to Deity, 
and that no more than a vague cry for aid. 

" The soul of Owain, the son of Urien ; may its Lord consider 
its need. 
The chief of Keged, the heavy sward conceals him j 



200 ^^^ ^^0 LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

His knowledge was not shallow. 
A low cell contains the renowned protector of bards. 
The wings of dawn were the flowing of his lances. 
For there will not he found a match for the chief of the glitter' 

ing west. 
The reaper of tenacious foes. The offspring of his father and 

grandfather. 
When Flamdwyn killed Owain there was not one greater than 

he sleeping. 
A wide number of Lloegyr went to sleep with the light in their 

eyes." 

When he considers what will come to himself it is 
with as pagan a forecast : 

" Until I fail in old age, 
In the sore necessity of death. 
May I not be smiling 
If I praise not Urien." 

Finally, hear Aneurin : 

" I am not headstrong and petulant. 
I will not avenge myself on him who drives me. 
I will not laugh in derision. 
Under foot for a while 
My knee is stretched. 
My hands are bound 
In the earthen house 
"With an iron chain." 

Mr. Skene thinks that this must be the work of an 
interpolator or extender, since no man could compose 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 201 

poetry after his death. But one may treat the future 
as the present in grim prevision, and at any rate the 
paternity of the lines need not greatly concern us. 
Whoever wrote or uttered them, they reflect the feeling 
of the day. Something very like it recurs in the most 
painful and direly veracious part of Tennyson's " The 
Two Voices." 



CHAPTER XII. 

FROM THE FALL OF AETHUR TO THE CONQUEST OF 
THE SEVERN. 

It has been well said that the second great onslaught 
of the Saxons followed very closely the downfall of 
Arthur. At this time the Eastern empire was showing 
unwonted activity. Its great generals drove barbarian 
back upon barbarian, until the outer wave broke over 
that island realm which one imperial will had so long 
held together. 

Decay, in spite of him, was already at work. Dis- 
sension, the vice of the Celt, had broken out fatally 
near the throne. His most redoubtable lieutenant, 
his very queen, had proved unfaithful. A trusted 
follower and kinsman headed a rebellion for his 
overthrow. Both court and camp were filled with 
ugly reminders that his ideals were flouted and the 
lesson of his life was forgotten. It was time for him 
to pass to Avalon. 

An eye-witness, writing about 564, testifies in this 
way : " But when these (the generation of Mount 
Badon) had departed out of this world, and a new race 
succeeded who were ignorant of this troublesome time 

202 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 203 

and had only experience of the present prosperity, all 
the laws of truth and justice were shaken and sub- 
verted." ..." Britain has kings, but they are 
tyrants; she has judges, but unrighteous ones; gen- 
erally engaged in plunder and rapine, but always prey- 
ing on the innocent ; whenever they exert themselves to 
avenge or protect, it is sure to be in favor of robbers 
and criminals ; they have abundance of wives, yet are 
they addicted to fornication and adultery ; they are 
ever ready to take oaths, and as often perjure them- 
selves ; they make a vow and almost immediately act 
falsely; they make war, but their wars are against 
their own countrymen, and are unjust ones." Allow- 
ing for exaggeration, we must recognize here the pic- 
ture of a corrupt society, already doomed. He admits 
the very few whose " worthy lives" are " a pattern to 
all men," but says that even the church can scarcely 
discern them for the "great multitude daily rushing 
down to hell." 

Yet he does not seem to have understood the form 
that vengeance would take, nor to have seen the on- 
ward creeping of the tiger already. By this time, in 
the far northeast, Ida had landed near Bamborough, 
roused all the half-enfranchised Angle-folk of the 
Lothians, and sent his foraying parties far into the 
lands of the West. At the south of the island, Cenric, 
son of Cerdic, had essayed the all but impregnable 



204 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Sorbiodunum, and perhaps defeated a sortie of its 
defenders. Four years later, accompanied by his son 
Ceawlin, he pushed along the great road leading north- 
west from Winchester, and fought a battle at Barbury 
Hill on the western verge of the downs. But to Gil- 
das these events were clearly of no great import. In 
one place he speaks of the descendants of Ambrosius 
provoking their cruel enemy to battle and gaining the 
victory. In another, he mentions, incidentally, " our 
foreign wars having ceased, but our civil troubles 
remaining." Probably these engagements appeared to 
him as the mere occasional ebb and flow of a disputed 
frontier ; trivial things indeed in comparison with the 
dreadful internecine slaughter of Camlan and the storm 
which was gathering to break the strength of the 
Cumbrian Britons at Arderydd ! 

Excepting the losses in Bernicia, which perhaps had 
never been very firmly held, the British line of defence 
remained almost unbroken. The unity of Britain was 
indeed nominally continued, for Arthur at Glastenbury 
had passed the sovereignty to Constantine, as the old 
tale relates ; and Caradoc Yriechvras, until he fell in 
battle at Catraeth, must have been a tower of strength 
to his kinsman. 

But already the brilliant, passionate Maelgwn was 
urging his own pretentions, which were established 
after a time in all the western mountain land by some 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 205 

vaguely-recorded struggle at the mouth of the Dovey. 
Bardic song remembers this as the "affair of Cors- 
feckno." It figures, with an odd aspect of necromancy, 
even among the pages of the ancient laws. 

Damnonia remained to the house of Ambrosias, a 
realm in those days extending from the woodlands of 
the Frome as far as the western seas. All of the 
peninsula was included, — Somerset, Devon, Cornwall. 

Eastward and northward of Wales proper, a trio of 
princes, — Vortipore, Cuneglasse, Cynan, — maintained 
a qualified independence, aiming at much more. > Each 
had his claims. Vortipore was most likely a descend- 
ant of Vortigern. Both ruled in Demetia. Their 
names obviously have the same first syllable, which is 
that also of Vortimer, whose sonship is undoubted. 
Finally a certain abhorrent and unusual offence is 
charged by Nennius against Vortigern, and by Gildas 
against Vortipore. These coincidences will not be 
easily accounted for in any other way. 

Cuneglasse may have been, like Maelgwn, of the 
seed of the great Guledig Cunedda. He evidently 
arrogated to himself the Arthurian influence and in- 
signia. He may have been given by Arthur some 
authority in the region between the Welsh mountains 
and the southern wall. There his dominions lay. 

Cynan or Conan is given by Gildas the title " Au- 
relius," and enrolled by Dr. Guest among the offspring 

18 



206 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

of Ambrose. He perhaps commanded in one great 
battle after the death of Arthur. 

In Scotland, Llew of the Lothians had no longer 
a kingdom. Arawn was lost among the mountain 
heathen and the mountain mystery, which gave his 
realm an infernal name. Only Urien, " the splendid 
prince of the North, the choicest of princes," held out 
in furious resistance and retaliation. " The lord of the 
cultivated regions," he is called, and no doubt it was 
even yet the fight of civilization. But the weapons 
and the methods — except for some Roman memories — 
were rather those of barbarian against barbarian. Cries 
Urien, — 

" Let us raise our spears over the heads of men, 
And rush upon Flamdwyn in his army." 

Reged — Cumberland — was Urien's kingdom, and 
with it Mureif, the region about Glasgow. Against 
him came Ida and Ida's son Theodric, the flame-bearer, 
fighting their way westward and south westward, until 
the water-shed of the island, from the Peak to Selkirk 
Forest, bore the sinister name of the wilderness, — a 
broad, wasted border-land given over to the reciprocal 
forays and furies of the sons of hate. 

The greater cities of lowland Britain most likely 
prepared as best they could for individual defence, call- 
ing to their aid the subject population without their 
walls. The lesser towns banded themselves together 



TEE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 207 

in provincial groups. Thus Caer Segeint (Calleva, Sil- 
chester) seems to Lave maintained until the very last a 
Roman military organization and the eagle standard, 
while Bensington and Lenborough, with two more, 
made the upper Thames valley and its northern tribu- 
taries "the country of the Four Towns." All that 
remained of civilized Britain was actively fortifying 
and actively seeking alliance. 

One expedient of this time was probably the oddest 
ever adopted for collecting an army and keeping it 
together. Perhaps the origin was in the public shows 
and entertainments, modified from those of Rome by 
Ambrose and Arthur. Experience showed that a great 
feast and drinking bout would draw the fighting Celt 
from afar, and hold him while it lasted. If trials of 
skul were added, and rough tilting, so much the better. 
From this, there was an easy transition to a furious 
inroad over the border of the nearest enemy. The 
British leaders took the lesson to heart. Whenever 
there was a weak point to be made strong, or a Saxon 
frontier to be overrun, invitations went out abundantly 
to a great Christian merry-making. The bards grew 
eloquent in praise of the ruinous foibles that answered 
so well the purpose of the hour. But the Saxons 
awoke also to the under-meaning of this Celtic jollity, 
and their dogged infantry came likewise to the feast. 

At the eastern end of the northern wall in the 



208 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Manau Gododin of the great Cunedda, a notable for- 
tress town, probably with a Roman basilica, looked out 
over the sea. Whatever its past vicissitudes, the 
Britons held it now, with the Picts to the northward 
and the Saxons to the southward, confederate and hos- 
tile. It was a desperate place for the gathering of an 
army, and some unusually audacious enterprise must 
have been on foot. The flower of the land were drawn 
from its remoter regions, a few, including the son of 
Cian Gwenclan, being actually cut off on the way. A 
strong force gathered, and fell to at the good things 
provided, only laughing the more when they found 
that a vastly greater host had invested them. From 
time to time they intermitted their orgies to issue in 
detached parties and fight, for pure love of fighting, 
upon the battle-strand, Cat-traeth. But soon they had 
quite enough to do in defending the outer wall. This 
was taken and retaken. Again there were frantic 
sorties, but they could not break the deadly grip of 
the Saxon. It closed more and more tightly after 
every spasm. The Britons were too few to endure 
their heavy losses. The enemy came swarming over 
among them. Desperate fighting went on from street 
to street. Finally the basilica was stormed, the com- 
batants wading in blood as they fought on. The gar- 
rison was all but obliterated, a bare handful cutting 
their way to life and liberty. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 209 

Something like this may be disentangled from 
the confused repetitions and eulogiums of Aneurin. 
Whether his poem, or collection of poems, should be 
read as describing one battle or two battles, we need 
not consider. Mr. Skene supports the latter view. 
But in part, at least, it relates the great slaughter of 
Catraeth, — probably between 550 and 560, — wherein, 
with many a soldier, " many a minstrel fell." There 
also — heaviest loss of all — fell Caradoc Vriecvras, the 
great " battle-knight" of Arthur. 

We may suppose this to have preceded the battle of 
Barberry Hill, if not the attack on old Sarum. It was 
but natural that vehement aggression both at the south 
and at the north should follow. Not in Wessex and 
Bernicia only, but all along the line of the Saxon 
shore, the hostile intruders felt that their grand oppor- 
tunity had come. Through the uneven woodlands north 
of London they broke to the sacking of Verulam, over- 
threw its marble columns, destroyed the tombs of its 
martyrs, and laid it utterly waste. They followed their 
old road to Caer Lerion, and that city passed away. 
They swarmed from the fenlands ov^er the cities of 
Cambridgeshire, and so far obliterated them that even 
relics of their former life and beauty were rare when 
the Norman came. They drove the eagle of Caer 
Segeint to shelter within its walls ; set the houses 
ablaze (according to the old story) by the flight of fire- 
o 18* 



210 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

laden birds ; took the town bj sudden onfall and mas- 
sacre, and left the ruins empty of human occupants. 
They starved out the impregnable fortress of Old 
Sarum, and drove the monks of Amesbury westward 
to a younger choir. They gathered about the circuit 
of London's defences, wrangling with each other for 
the prize, until Ethelbert of Kent, though defeated by 
the forces of Wessex, found means to establish an East 
Saxon king in the conquered city. Whether or no in 
this instance a period of destruction and desolation 
intervened is matter of dispute. Probably the com- 
pany of foreign merchants found favor with the com- 
paratively enlightened Kent-folk, and were permitted 
to keep alive a nucleus of London, if nothing more. 
In 604 it was the East Saxon capital, whence King 
Saebert ruled also over Hertfordshire and Middlesex. 

For the dates of these events we have generally 
nothing very definite. Old Sarum was apparently in 
British hands in 552. Verulam had been taken and 
destroyed before Gildas wrote, and probably as early 
as 550. London may have held out until 568, when 
Ethelbert was defeated at Wimbledon in Surrey, but is 
more likely to have surrendered earlier, as he moved 
up the^ Thames. The remainder of lowland Britain 
fell rapidly. In 571, Cuthulf, a brother of Cenric and 
Cutha, led an expedition into the territory of the Four 
Towns, between the Chiltern Hills and the Cotswolds, 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 211 

a bit of domain marked off naturally, as Mr. Guest 
has observed, from all the rest of Britain. Only one 
battle is recorded in this campaign, probably the final 
overthrow of a retreating enemy, for the place (Bedford) 
is more northerly than any of these cities. They all 
surrendered, or were taken, as a necessary consequence, 
and the conquest of the Thames Valley was ended. 

In the north a more vigorous war was maintained 
by the Celtic woodlanders and the soldier-race about 
the wall. Llywarch and his sons, the most eminent 
of Arthur's men yet alive, were the spirit and strong 
arm of this resistance. Taliessin and Aneurin, with 
other bards, kept life and fire in their followers by their 
ringing martial lays. Urien fell, and his severed head 
was borne away by a comrade, at the saddle-bow, that 
it might not be left in the hands of a despiteful enemy. 
In a strong poem of this ghastly ride which has come 
down to us, the bearer celebrates the virtues of his 
dead friend and kinsman, yet cries out, on the pity of 
his fate, — 

" A head I bear, 
The head of Urien, who governed a court in mildness, 
And on his white bosom the sable raven gluts." 

And again, — 

" The delicate white corpse will be covered to-night 
Amid earth and green sods : 
Woe my hand that the son of Cynvareh is slain." 



212 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

But he left in Owain a successor as formidable ; and 
when Theodric, the flame-bearer, slew the young chief, 
Rhydderch, an ally of Urien, took up the conflict. 
But now the pagan party at the north was gathering 
head for revolt, under a chieftain named Gwendolew. 
Perhaps the rebels were in the Saxon interest, perhaps 
merely instigated by the neighborhood and example of 
a warlike anti-Christian people. At any rate, the 
movement grew to such proportions that Rhydderch 
was obliged to call in the aid of Maelgwn and the 
Scottish King Aidan of Dalraida. These three awaited 
their enemy by the clifiB of the Lyddel, in the Pass 
of Arderydd, leading northeast from Carlisle and the 
great wall. The result was a decisive pagan over- 
throw and the establishment under Rhydderch of the 
strong kingdom of Strathclyde, which drew under it 
all Cymric and other Celtic fragments that would have 
Alcluyd (Dumbarton) for a capital. This little state 
lived on for centuries, and at one time threatened to 
reverse the destiny of Britain. 

But the loss of life in civil war was a deplorable 
concomitant of this victory. Another was the greater 
severance of the northern Britons from what had now 
become the great Welsh kingdom of Arthur's half- 
recreant Lancelot. In a movement of wayward gener- 
osity Maelgwn might have rendered aid again. But 
the Saxon did not immediately threaten his mountain 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 213 

strongholds, and he would hardly bestir himself with- 
out special appeal. It is less easy to understand his 
neglect of the intermediate Cymry, the Cumbrians 
proper, who held by precarious tenure, and finally not 
at all, the march of Deira. Somewhere in this quarter 
lay Llywarch's own little kingdom of Argoed, and his 
remaining sons were fighting for it desperately. Was 
there an old enmity behind this inaction, — the enmity 
of one who had wronged Arthur against Arthur's faith- 
ful counsellor? 

The character of this Welsh monarch, Maelgwn, first 
identified with Lancelot by De Villemarch, is perhaps 
the most intensely dramatic of his time. What he was 
in later romance we know best of all by Tennyson's 
presentation, — a very human figure, dashed with guilt 
and magnanimity, full of " warmth of color," daring 
all things, yet weak before the allurement of sin. How 
he appeared to an embittered moralist of his own time, 
let Gildas inform us. 

" And likewise, O thou dragon of the island, who 
hast deprived many tyrants as well of their kingdoms 
as of their lives, and, though the last mentioned in my 
writing, the first in mischief, exceeding many in power 
and also in malice, more liberal than others in giving, 
more licentious in sinning, strong in arms but stronger 
in working thine own soul's destruction, Maglocune, 
why art thou foolishly rolling in that black pool of 



214 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

thine offences ? Why dost thou wilfully heap like a 
mountain upon thy kingly shoulders such a black load 
of sins? . . . What holy man is there who, moved 
with the narration of such a history, would not pres- 
ently break out into weeping and lamentations ?" 

Of Llywarch we get a very different picture. He 
muses thus : 

" I was formerly fair of limb, 
I was eloquent in speech. 
The men of Argoed have ever supported me. 

" What I loved when a youth are hateful to me now, 
A stranger's daughter and a gray steed. 
Am I not for them unmeet ? 

" Sharp is my spear, furious in the onset. 
I will prepare to watch the ford. 
Support against falling may God grant me. 

" Four-and-twenty sons have been to me. 
Wearing the golden chain, leaders of armies. 
Gwen was the best of them. 

" For the terror of death from the base men of Lloegyr 
I will not tarnish my honor." 

It is impossible to think of Llywarch but as a hero, 
— impulsive, life-loving, franker than any child, but 
strong of will, sound in faith, warm and true of heart, 
— in the simplicity of his nobility the best living repre- 
sentative of the illustrious dead. 

But his striving ended after all in the loss of Ar- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 215 

goed. The steps are not traceable, for the poet is more 
absorbed in his bereavement and personal experiences 
than in the needs of later history. We get the general 
impression of a series of engagements, — the names of 
some are given, — but with nothing at all of their rela- 
tion to each other in time, place, or event. They prob- 
ably occurred in the decade between 560 and 570. 
The final outcome forced him to take refuge with Cyn- 
dylan of Shrewsbury, his kinsman, a feudatory of 
Brochwel of Powys and ruler over the region about 
the Wrekin, the upper valley of the Severn. Many 
of his family had been slain. The remainder went 
with him. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE OVEETHEOW OF THE WEST. 

Whatever remained of Roman and Arthurian 
Britain was now chiefly to be found in the valleys of 
the Severn, the Eden, the Exe, and the Dee. The 
first, with its tributaries, drained by far the largest area, 
and reflected more and wealthier cities than all the 
others together. The forced upgrowth of these towns 
must before this have come to an end, partly by reason 
of frequent menace and the visible shadow of fate, 
but even more because one-half of Britain had melted 
utterly away. 

On Glevum and Aquae Solis the news of the battle 
of Bedford must have fallen as a more than ominous 
blow. Doubtless they opened their gates and their 
hearts, but their eyes were opened also. Just over the 
eastward hills had been a little Celtic world of cus- 
tomers and neighbors. Now that world had been 
obliterated as in the passing of a dream. They must 
prepare, with straitened resources, for the assault of 
their unmerciful enemy. With them stood and fell 
Corineum, the one fastness yet remaining in British 
hands over the Cotswold Ridge. " 
216 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 217 

Nowhere in the island was there a stronger place ; 
yet, jutting out as it did from the main line, its position 
was highly 23erilous. Its riches, altogether exceptional, 
were flaunted in the very faces of too many hungry 
marauders. Cuthulf crouched with longing eyes on 
the northeast, beside his new acquisition of Eynsham. 
Ceawlin and Cuthwin hounded on their forces from 
the edge of the Marlborough downs. It must have 
been mightily garrisoned, for, after all, the storm of 
war swept by or swept around, breaking far in the 
rear, within view of Mount Badon. 

The tale of this conquest has been well told by Dr. 
Guest and after him by Mr. Green ; yet their route to 
Deorham is purely one of conjecture. Is it not on the 
whole more likely that the Saxons, finding Corineura 
too hard for them, withdrew from the direct attack 
and yet once again took to the sea ? What more 
natural, too, than that they should aim immediately at 
the scene of their greatest overthrow ! A victory there 
would be victory indeed. 

Perhaps a time was chosen when the Britons of the 
south were depleted by the northern wars. They 
must have had a contingent at Arderydd. It may not 
yet have returned. Or some unusual accession of 
strength may have determined the West Saxon move- 
ment of A.D. 577. 

We do not know the commander of the Britons. 
K 19 



218 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

There may have been a fraternity of leaders no less 
than of cities. " Three kings" were slain ; but only 
one name of these (Conraael, Peak-Mael) can tell us 
anything. It sounds like another variation of Maelwas 
and Maelgwn. Surely, too, there was the place for the 
monarch of Gwynedd and overlord of all Wales to 
fight his last fight. There, within view of Mount 
Badon, might Arthur's unfaithful lieutenant redeem 
his honor, so far as it lay within redemption, by re- 
peating the great exploit of his dead leader. But this 
hope, if he held it, was vain. The day went ruinously 
against him. " In the lost battle borne down by the 
flying" we find the fitting end of Lancelot. 

Deorham has been treated as a critical point in the 
long struggle, since the defeat cut off Damnonia from 
the body of Britain. Yet there can have been little 
co-operation even before. Constantine probably re- 
garded the Welsh princes in the light of usurping 
pretenders. Communication by water was uninter- 
rupted, and easier than by land. But when the Four 
Towns were allowed to fight their enemy unaided ; 
when the heroes of Argoed, for lack of men, were 
driven foot by foot from every abiding-place; when 
all Lloegria, taken piecemeal, had become the prey of 
the Saxon, it is plain that anything like a national 
resistance was at an end already. 

Still the overthrow at Deorham was a great calamity. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 219 

Every form of disaster followed in its train. The 
country that it threw open to ravage was unexcelled 
in Britain. All along the road to Corineum, all up 
and down the Avon valley and the Severn, the E,oman 
villas, with their life of luxury, lay thickly sown. 
Celtic supremacy, however long continued, can hardly 
have put away so much that made the convenience and 
brightness of living. The population was dense and 
thriving even yet, and the face of the country all in 
bloom. The blow fell, and the blossoming-time was 
ended. The circle of hostility spread outward on 
every side, until it broke against the bases of the Welsh 
mountains beyond the Wye, stirred the forest-leaves 
of Dean and Arden, drove the miners of Mendip 
from their toil, and was lost amid the marshes of 
Glastenbury. All the open land was the worse for 
that fiery flooding. 

The doom of Bath came more quickly. Fighting 
but nine miles away and racing confusedly thither, it 
is no wonder if the fugitive and the slayer brought 
panic and havoc together into every home. Through 
the gate and over the wall came the torrent of Saxon 
lances. The fury of the onset made destruction instant 
and complete. The bright Temple of the Sun, with all 
the luxurious beauty that had grown up about it, was 
thereafter no more. Nothing remained but the lone- 
someness of desolation, stirring into mournful pity even 



220 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

the minstrelsy of the victor. " The Ruin" of the 
Codex Exoniensis has for its topic this unhappy city. 

" There the baths were 
Hot on the breast. 



" Bright were the burgh dwellings, 
Many its princely halls, 
High its steepled splendor ; 
Many a mead-hall 
Full of human joys ; 
They perished in wide slaughter. 
Death destroyed all 
Their renowned warriors. 
Therefore these courts are dreary, 

* * * * * 

" There many a chief of old, 
Joyous and gold-bright, 
Proud and with wine elate, 
In warlike decoration shone. 



" Perishes the work of giants ; 
The roofs are fallen, 
The towers tottering. 
The hoar gate-towers despoiled ; 
Shattered the battlements, 
Eiven, fallen." 

It is no wonder that Dr. Freeman declares, "Aquse 
Sol is, Glevum, and Corineum fell like Jericho and Ai." 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 221 

But we really have no proof, except as to the former. 
Winchester and Canterbury, York and London, were 
probably granted mercy. Rutupise held even its 
Roman name so late as the time of Bede, for he men- 
tions it with little change. We need not assume 
that more than one of the three cities near the lower 
Severn was visited with fire and sword. Admittedly 
the period of desolation for Cirencester and Gloucester 
must have been "short indeed." Perhaps it never 
existed at all. 

Mr. Green admits that the country people may not 
have been driven from the soil which Ceawlin won. 
In a very few years we find Britons aiding a revolt 
against him. No doubt the villas and villages had 
been roughly raided, or even torn to pieces and set on 
fire ; but while the inhabitants kept their limbs they 
could flee, and the woods and rough uplands were 
always a shelter. 

In these shadowy labyrinths the odds were with 
the men who could lie in wait and who knew the 
ground. The Saxons came to have a horror of them, 
and would rarely venture where so much was to be 
lost and so very little won. Thus they never yet had 
penetrated the great forest of Andred ; they gave the 
lesser Frome woods for a hundred years the name (and 
avoidance) of an unexplored sea, and their frightful 
disaster in the forest of Celyddon taught them to 

19* 



222 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

respect the independence of the free Britons of Elraet. 
The same held true of every ridge and fen and stretch 
of rough waste country throughout Britain. The 
Saxon conquest was until then of the lowlands and 
open lands only. Nor did it ever afterwards go the 
length of wholly dispossessing the Celtic woodlanders. 
Mr. Green elaborately puts before us the effect of such 
tracts in checking or deflecting the various currents of 
invasion. But he hardly seems to be aware that the 
real obstacle was always the forest with its garrison. 
It is probable that such places never had been and 
never again will be so densely populated as they were 
then. 

But such Celtic fragments, even when actively hostile, 
could not greatly impede an invader who kept the way 
of the valley. Ceawlin devoted several years to 
making sure of the country behind him, then pushed 
on up the Severn, through the forest of Wyre, to 
another tempting prey. 

Here was the domain of Cyndylan with whom 
Llywarch had taken shelter. Pengwyrn, now Shrews- 
bury, was his capital ; but this and the other Celtic 
towns along the water-side or up among the hills were 
but of slight account in comparison with the one great 
prize of his dominion, the stately Roman city of Uri- 
conium. It lay in a little cluster of native satellites, 
"between Tren and Traval, between Tren and 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 223 

Tradwyd," the Wrekin, with a " bright fort" for coro- 
nal, towering above them all to give it name. 

Its wealth and size have been matters of astonish- 
ment, for it was very near the mountain border. But 
a great mining country lay nearer still, and it made a 
necessary station in all transit between the Vale Royal 
and the Severn Sea. In some particulars it surpassed 
every other city of Britain. The streets have a modern 
width, instead of being the mere lanes with which the 
Romans and their successors were generally content. 
Traces of culture are found, making its life oddly real 
and familiar : a Latin inscription in one place, in 
another a surgeon's box with a scalpel as brjght and 
keen as if new. It long lay open, like the cities we 
know, to every comer ; but when walled, in later 
times of danger, the circuit was even greater than 
that of London. Its public buildings, its places of 
entertainment, were generous and costly. The pre- 
dominance of marble in its architecture had given it 
the name of " The White City." Its roofs were of 
thin stone, besprinkled with mica, which must have 
gleamed afar like silver in the moonlight, or shone like 
flecks of gold in the rising sun. 

"We do not know of any resistance to the march 
through the woodlands. It may have been a surprise, 
for " a horseman from a Caer below" is reproached 
with tardiness in his warning. When we discover the 



224 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

defenders, they are partly gathered about the city walls, 
partly in the almost impregnable fortress on the height 
of Dinnle Wrecon. 

The latter was the head-quarters of Cyndylan, while 
Lly warch took post in Uriconium and its native suburb, 
Tren. Dr. Guest makes these identical, but the men- 
tion of them in the Marwand Cyndylan evidently 
points to some distinction. Probably they were, yet 
were not, the same, as in the case of every half-absorbed 
outgrowth. Tren may have lain partly within and 
partly without the walls on the down-river side. 

Here the strain of the combat would come, and here 
we find Llywarch frantically calling for aid. Years 
had not taught him patience under fire nor Fabian 
generalship. " Cyndylan, a cause of grief thou art," he 
cries aloud. " Set forward will not be the array," — 
" shall a man be no better than a maid ?" He taunts 
him with his moustache also. And Cyndylan, who 
has been quite right in clinging at every sacrifice to his 
best chance of victory, begins at once, in true Celtic 
fashion, a rush downward to the vale, at this imputa- 
tion on his manhood. 

Llywarch sees his error when too late, and beseeches 
him to "hold the slope," to "hold the top until the 
Lloegrians come through Tren." Wisely enough he 
adds, when wisdom can no longer avail, " It is not 
called a wood for one tree." 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 225 

But now Cyndylan, " obstinate in the host," will by 
no means be persuaded. " With heart of greyhound 
he descended to the turmoil of battle. . . . With 
heart of wild boar he descended." Then straightway 
arose "in the meadow the clatter of shields." The 
" carnage in two swaths" became dreadful. But it was 
a lost battle to the Briton. He was beaten from the 
low ground, from the houses, from the slope, from the 
very crest. " I marvel that the bright fort is no more." 
Both Tren and "the white town" were given over 
utterly to the fire and steel. The dead Cyndylan was 
borne away to Bassa's Chapel, far up the valley. The 
wave of devastation rolled after him, until his castle 
on Carrec Hytwy th lay a ruin, and " Llys Pengwern, 
is it not in flames ?" 

The tale is told poetically, but there is corroboration 
of its truth. The relics brought to light of recent 
years repeat it in their own way. The capture was 
instant, violent, and merciless. Repairs of the forum 
wall were interrupted suddenly. The bones of women 
and children have been found still blackening, where 
they were cut down in the streets. The skulls are 
mainly Celtic of the Ivernian mixture, as might be 
expected of the inhabitants along that frontier. Evi- 
dently the Saxons had the game of slaughter in their 
own hands. 

Yet there must have been a multitude who escaped, 
P 



226 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

as Llywarch did. The strong city of Deva, or Caer 
Ligion, away to the northward, would be their first 
refuge, their point of rallying. 

Here Brochwel, Prince of Powys, however appalled 
by the rapid succession of disaster, gathered men with 
all speed from the fragment that remained of his 
realm. As the enemy drew nearer, he marched forth 
and met them in a pass of the hills, where rise the 
head-waters of the great stream which they had fol- 
lowed so long. The encounter must have been fierce 
to desperation, for the Briton, if beaten here, could 
scarce hope to make another stand. The fury of the 
defenders prevailed at last. Cutha fell. Ceawlin with 
his discomfited army went backward in bitter chagrin, 
taking vengeance all the way. 

The spoil which they bore with them was the chief 
good they had of this inroad. As far as the forest of 
Wyre the land was retaken. No living Briton except 
the very few survivors of Mount Badon could remem- 
ber so signal a triumph. He chanted in his elation 
of this " battle against the lord of fame in the dales 
of the Severn ; against Brochwel of Powys, who loved 
my song." But the shining city of the Wrekin was 
gone forever. 

This battle of Faddiley was the beginning of a 
spirited rally by the Britons. It was also the turning- 
point of the fortunes of Ceawlin. Victory there 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 227 

would have given him Chester and the Yale Royal, 
would have opened up the whole northern country as 
far as Carlisle, would have raised him above all other 
English monarchs by the head. But with defeat his 
hold upon even his own people grew weaker. A great 
body of the men of the lower Severn, Briton and 
Saxon together, revolted under his nephew Ceolric. 
Probably some of BrochwePs men came through the 
upper woodlands to join them. Ceawlin retired from 
the gathering storm towards the older part of his king- 
dom, but finally turned at bay near the vale of the 
White Horse. 

The position was a strong one, crowning the same 
" downs" on which he had fought and won before at 
Barberry Hill, a memory of good omen. It was 
strategically important, also, for here the road from 
Surrey, a region which his other great victory of Wim- 
bledon had gained for him, crossed the ancient Ickneild 
way that led to the more northern conquests of his 
brother in the Thames valley. A third Roman road 
established communication with Winchester and the 
first acquisitions of his grandfather Cerdic. Every line 
was open which might admit West Saxon reinforce- 
ments or be followed by the king of Wessex in retreat. 

The former did not come in sufficient volume, or the 
mixed hostile multitude of the West were too sudden 
and strong in their fury. We know little of the fight. 



228 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

1 

except that the slaughter was extreme on both sides, 

and that the overthrow of Ceawlin was beyond all 

retrieving. He made no further effort, but fled at once 

from the kingdom, and died, an exile, within the year. 

This was the battle of Wauborough, a.d. 592. It 
must have distinctly modified the relations of the 
two peoples, for Ceolric would hardly wish or dare to 
treat arrogantly the men who had given him his crown. 
Thereafter Wessex, the land of Alfred and of Arthur, 
is to be regarded as equally British and Saxon. 

Meanwhile, the rest of the island was not in a slum- 
ber. Aedan, one of the three kings who conquered at 
Arderydd, was to the Cymry of the northwest what 
" the lord of fame" may have been to Ceolric. Before 
his time the enmity between the Gael of Dalraida and 
the true Briton was no less inveterate than the enmity 
between the Briton and the Saxon. The Scot was one 
of the hereditary ravagers of the isle, one of the pagan 
worriers against whom it struggled interminably. All 
along the western coast his colonies had made their 
lodgements. At one time nearly half of Wales proper, 
from St. David's to Anglesey, had been in their hands. 
They may even have seemed likely to do by the western 
mountaineer as the Saxons were beginning to do by the 
lowland citizen. But these Celts of Hibernia had not 
the Saxon doggedness. What they gained they lost 
again. One by one they fell under Cymric rulers, 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 229 

their strongest offshoot in Gwynedd being lopped off 
bit by bit, until the father of Maelgwn completed the 
work by the storming of Mona. No doubt, this ended 
also the druidic revival in that island. 

But Aedan was a convert, and a very efficient soldier 
of the faith. St. Columba had taken notice of him, 
and marked him for high honor. According to the 
saint's account, this was the inspiration and command 
of an angel. Perhaps we should substitute the term 
*^ illusion" now. But whatever the warrant, the conse- 
cration followed quickly. One year after Aedan's first 
great battle, the holy hands of Columba gave him a 
special prestige among the princes of Christendom, 
He became, for a time, the Dux Bellorum or Guledig 
of the northern country. 

The first result was a military outburst of zeaL In 
battle after battle the Scots and Cymry whom he led 
won back all, and more than all, that had been lost at 
Catraeth. A series of campaigns, filling the interval 
between a.d. 580 and 590, gave them the region along 
the southern shore of the Forth to its great estuary. 

Yet almost at the same time the Bernician ruler had 
made good his losses over and again by annexing all 
Deira. Thenceforward these united Saxon powers 
were called Northumbria, a strong new kingdom ex- 
tending along the eastern coast from the Forth to the 
Humber, and inland over the water-shed of Britain. 

20 



230 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

Before long this conqueror died, and Ethelfrith, his 
son, took up the work) marching northward with an 
army. Aedan met him beside the Liddel, where their 
boundary had been made real by a strong wall known 
as the Cattrail. An obstinate battle followed. One 
part of the Northumbrian array was cut to pieces, but 
the remainder held firm and routed their enemy at the 
last. Aedan could not recover this defeat. His leader- 
ship ended. The supremacy of Dalraida was post- 
poned for many generations. 

But there was work yet for Ethelfrith in Deira, 
where malcontents were kept astir by the neighborhood 
of the exiled princes of their old royal line. One of 
these had crossed into Mercia, that midland kingdom 
which was founded we hardly know how. The other 
took refuge at first in a tongue of British territory, 
jutting far out from the main body of Wales into the 
heart of Yorkshire. This was Elmet, a rugged little 
kingdom with a savage king. Leaving his son Hereric 
in that den, — perforce it may be, — the prince of Deira 
sought the court of Powys. After him followed the 
attack of Ethelfrith. 

Brochwel was aging now. A generation had all 
but gone by since he flung the conquering Ceawlin, in 
the height of his power, back from the Vale Royal to 
the valley of death. But men remembered, and he 
was still " the lord of fame." The king of Northum- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 231 

bria may have been the only Saxon living who would 
dare measure arms with hira. At least Mercia and its 
overlords had forborne any serious aggression. Wes- 
sex was reorganized under a king of his choosing. The 
other Teutonic fragments were mere dependencies or 
too far away. 

Caer-ligion, his capital — the Deva of Roman times 
— had a notable share in this prestige. Its earlier re- 
finement and splendor no doubt had nearly passed 
away. But it had been a place of refuge from the be- 
ginning, and it was so still. Unlike Uricouium, Veru- 
1am, and Calleva, it was in its origin a fortified, a 
notably fortified, city. Whatever of civilization re- 
mained in the western land must have centred there. 
To this Chester hurried the fugitives from the wreck 
of the cities by the Severn, with whatsoever they could 
bear away. In this Chester gathered all who had felt 
the approach of danger along the Ribble, the Mersey, 
or the Dee. Even outside its walls a great monastery 
had grown up under its protection, feeling safe. The 
men of religion did not forget the town of shelter in 
the hour of its need. When the spoiler came, there 
were a thousand monks of Bangor on the field, raising 
their weaponless hands and imploring voices to the 
Lord God of Sabaoth. But they won no answer, ex- 
cept that of the merciless heathen steel. The aged 
king had fled already, making a most inglorious end 



232 "^HE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

of a glorious reign. The British army, king-forsaken 
and God-forsaken, fought on vehemently, as the great 
losses of the conqueror testify. But the waves of utter 
ruin passed over their city. Two hundred years later 
the Danes took post behind the broken walls, but only 
as men beset might stand at bay among the fragments 
of Uxmal or Palmyra. There was never again a com- 
plete massacre and sack of a great British city, but not 
even at Anderida can the frightful work have been 
done more thoroughly. And now at last the dominion 
of the Northern Saxon extended quite across the island 
from sea to sea. 

This brings us to the end, if not a little beyond it, 
of the two centuries which I have designated as " lost" 
from the history of Britain. But the word has been 
growing less applicable, our knowledge becoming less 
conjectural, the darkness brightening continually 
through twilight towards day. 

The attitude of both races in every way was chang- 
ing. Apart from the spreading influence of Christi- 
anity, there were reasons why this should be. Sixty 
years before, the Saxons held by a doubtful tenure only 
the mere fringe of the ocean. This they had been col- 
onizing from of old, or had won bit by bit, in circum- 
stances which made the Briton who remained among 
them a serf, an apostate, or, at best, a woodland outlaw. 

In the great body of the island this could not be. 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 233 

The splendid resistance of Ambrose, the long series of 
Arthur's victories over their greatest leaders, had taught 
the Saxons more than respect, if less than fear. When 
at last their great enemy was no more and their war- 
riors were pouring into the island by every gate-way, a 
sense of insecurity, of unreality, must have haunted 
them. The land which had bred an Arthur might 
breed one even greater than he. Prophecies were 
abroad already, pointing to such a deliverer. Later 
times found, or fancied, their fulfilment, in the brief 
outflaring of the glory of Cadwallon. 

But, however this might be, Arthur's old soldiers 
and their sons were to be met with everywhere. One 
of his lieutenants, if we read the name aright, had 
faced the Saxons to the death on the field of Deorham ; 
another had all but overcome their northern forces 
along the Bernician border, matching the terror of his 
name against that of the Flame-bearer himself; a third, 
with all his house, had fought the Deirans at the pas- 
sage of the Llawen and the Ford of Morlas, and had 
held Uriconium against Ceawlin until Cyndylan came 
rushing down to his doom from the " bright fort" of 
Dinnle Wrecon. 

The Saxons had won, but in great masses of territory, 
whence only a part of the fighting population would 
or could remove, and that population was dominated 
by the spirit of the great dead. Perilous neighbors 

20* 



234 THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

these, unless under some convention for living side by 
side in amity. The conqueror, who could neither 
ignore the Celt nor make an end of him, and who soon 
had desperate warfare with his own kin, ended by ac- 
cepting him as a brother in arms. The Celt, for his 
part, was very willing to attack or resist any Saxon, 
even with Saxons for fellow-soldiers and allies. In 
time local feeling would draw together more closely 
those of the two races who dwelt near. From this 
enlistment of subject Britons it was no great step to 
calling in the aid of some independent British kingdom. 

Among the Saxons, a change, incident to growth, 
was taking place. A multitude of wrangling tribes 
and petty sovereignties were grouping themselves, in 
shifting allegiance, under two or three main heads. 
First, Ethelbert of Kent was the nominal overlord 
of everything south of the Humber. Then Raed- 
wald of East Anglia took his place, leaving Ethelbert 
very little besides the Caint and the dependencies of 
London. But Ethelfrith of Northumbria challenged 
this supremacy, in particular demanding the extradition 
of Eadwine, prince of Deira, who had passed from 
Mercia to the court of Raedwald. The armies clashed 
together on the banks of the Idle, which "ran red" 
with the slaughter of Englishmen, and there was an 
end of Ethelfrith and his pretensions forever. 

Now, for a time, the land was more nearly one than 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 235 

it ever afterwards became during centuries. Eadwine, 
the exile, set up the " Empire of the English" 
with its capital at York, whence Rome had ruled the 
island. Every Saxon state obeyed him, excepting 
Kent, and that had only its earlier boundaries. A 
standard of purple and gold was borne before him as 
he rode; a tufted spear, the Roman tufa, when he 
walked the streets. His wide power was exercised 
well and wisely. It was the boast of Englishmen long 
afterwards that " a woman with her child might walk 
scathless from sea to sea in King Ead wine's day." But 
his was a fruit ripening too early. It lasted only until 
a stronger than he arose in Mercia and overthrew him 
by British aid. 

For the strength of Celtic Britain was not wholly 
gone. Three considerable Roman cities yet remained 
in native hands, — the Damnonian Isca (Exeter), Caer- 
leon upon Usk, and that Luguballium, or Caer Luilid, 
which we know as Carlisle. There were others of 
lesser note. With each of that trio went a strong 
British kingdom, cut off (by land) from its fellows, 
but still formidable. 

The central mass, Wales proper, was able to retort 
invasion for invasion within a few years after Caer 
Ligion's downfall. Under Cynan (Conan), as Dr. 
Guest supposes, the Welsh army penetrated to Bamp- 
ton in Oxfordshire, where an indecisive battle was 



236 ^J^^ ^WO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

fought, with heavy losses. According to Henry of 
Huntington, the Roman formation and tactics once 
more made their appearance in the field. But his nar- 
rative has a very fanciful air. As to the fact and 
seriousness of the engagement all are agreed. 

The northern kingdom of Strathclyde maintained its 
independence for about four hundred years, \yith one 
brief interval of submission. To its Roman legacy, 
Carlisle, by the southern wall. Dr. Freeman awardg 
the distinction of being the only city in Britain which 
was taken by the Saxon, yet became British again. 
Yet Alcluyd (Dumbarton) soon became the capital, out- 
shining the elder town in both Celtic and Saxon eyes. 
Bede alludes to it contemporaneously as " the strong 
city of the Britons." Even so late as Geoffrey of 
Monmouth, it was the one chiefly remembered. 

The country, between them, "the ancient diocese of 
Glasgow," is believed by a writer in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica to have been "the cradle of the Welsh 
language and literature." That it added greatly to 
Cymric poetry is beyond dispute. But in the eminently 
active life of warfare the energies of the region found 
a more adequate outlet. The heroic element runs 
through all that comes to us, by record or tradition, of 
the isolated yet indomitable soldiery between the walls. 
It was clearly the conjunction of Strathclyde and Wales 
with the Mercian forces which niade Penda and Cad- 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 237 

wallon dominant for a time in Northern Britain. 
Probably Dynaint, by reason of distance, rendered no 
aid. In the beginning this was perhaps the most 
powerful and cultured of the remaining Celtic states, 
and it long remained under illustrious protection and 
leadership. Yet it never seems to have shown the 
aggressive enterprise of mid-Wales or Strathclyde. 
The reason may have been that it had only one neigh- 
bor — Wessex — and no opportunity for alliance and 
combination, while there was little hope in any single- 
handed assault. 

Its people maintained their own boundaries well ; 
few better. The Saxon has never shown a more 
dogged front to misfortune. The history of their long 
isolated struggle can never be written ; but the land- 
marks which we have, by way of date, are enough to 
stir the blood. A hundred and seventy years after the 
death of Arthur — -a hundred and forty after the sever- 
ance from the rest of Britain — the king of Dynaint is 
still " the glorious lord of the western realm," even in 
the mouths of his enemies. Three-fourths of another 
century went by before the men of Wessex could push 
their frontier to the Tamar. And Cornish indepen- 
dence did not finally come to an end until a.d. 815, 
three centuries and a half from the beginning of the 
Saxon-British wars. The Celts of Damnonia won the 
best that could he hoped for, protracting their resistance 



238 '^SE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 

until subjection had no dreadful meaning. Fairly good 
terras were undoubtedly granted. 

But whether at the north or at the south, it was the 
fight of a doomed people. The pressure of the more 
powerful Saxons was upon them, and never relaxed for 
long. We see in the Cymric literature that they often 
felt what now we know. Old prophecies were fever- 
ishly astir to keep alive the courage of the people. The 
red dragon (cried the bards) would yet rally and drive 
out the white ; Leminitz, the mighty, would appear and 
end the rule of the invader. Nor were the clergy more 
backward. The chastisement of Britain had been per- 
mitted for her sins, and for them only, they thundered. 
Let her people turn to the ways of righteousness, and 
the Lord God would come marvellously to their aid. 

Now and again, as in the days of Ambrose, of Arthur, 
and of Cadwallon, it must have seemed that the hour 
of deliverance indeed had come. But such hopes had 
always a disastrous end, and the sense of loss, which 
was less illusionary, was also more abiding. It is to 
be recognized in the deep underlying pathos of all the 
old Welsh poetry. Even the vauntings of war and 
revelry strike one as the enforced distraction of a soul 
which will not brood ; the desperate effort of a high- 
spirited race to catch some wild side-gleams of bright- 
ness in following the black path to ruin. 

There is one old poem, translated (excepting a single 



THE TWO LOST CENTURIES OF BRITAIN. 239 

word) by Mr. Skene, wherein we have the bereavement 
of the land set forth very simply and quaintly, but with 
so much of the essential spirit of the Cymric people 
that I cannot do better than make its ending my own. 
The bard addresses bis hound Dormach, " truly the 
best of dogs, which belonged to Maelgwn :" 

" Dormach with the ruddy nose. "What a gazer 
Thou art upon me ! Because I notice 
Thy wanderings on Gwibir Vynyd !" 

And the dog replies : 

" I have been in the place where was killed Gwendolew, 
The son of Ceidaw, the pillar of songs, 
Where the ravens screamed over blood. 

♦' I have been in the place where Bran was killed. 
The son of Gwenyd of far-extending fame, 
Where the ravens of the battle-field screamed. 

*' I have been where Llachaw was slain, 
The son of Arthur extolled in songs, 
Where the ravens screamed over blood. 

" I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain, 
From the East to the North. 
I am alive, they in their graves I 

" I have been where the soldiers of Britain were slain, 
From the East to the South. 
Jam alive, they in death 1" 

THE END. 
Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadeuphi*. 



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